Warrior
by jhm64892
Summary: The sequel to Don't You Worry Child. After fleeing to the British Embassy, Samantha Stark and Wanda Maximoff have become employees of MI6. Things are about to change drastically as a man disguised as Bucky Barnes kills the British Prime Minister. A civil war is brewing amongst the Avengers. Sides will be taken, hearts will be broken and Samantha will be left stranded in the middle
1. Previously in Don't You Worry Child

_**A/N - Here it goes, the long awaited sequel for Don't You Worry Child. Actually, I don't know how many of you have been waiting for this and this isn't even the beginning of the book per se more like a catch up on what's happened previously. Then again, the first chapter is so close to finished that it won't be long before you get it. In other news, this story is going to be really interlinked with Civil War so if you haven't seen it and don't want spoilers, I apologise but you may have to wait until you've watched the film to catch up. Actually, if you haven't seen it, why are you reading my fanfic? Go out and see the movie!**_

 **Disclaimer: I do not, unfortunately, own Iron Man, Captain America or the Avengers. All characters barring Samantha Stark/Maria Thomas are the property of Marvel.**

 **Also Trigger Warning: Basically every single bad thing that could happen (sexual assault, child abuse, PTSD) gets brought up at some point or another.**

 _Previously in the Samantha Stark Chronicles:_

"My name is Samantha Montgomery, my mother is… was Audrey Montgomery. I – apparently I am Tony's daughter,"

"Dad I can't guarantee I won't end up in another situation where a gun will be used on me," she argued.

"How do you feel about Samantha?" Tony asked after shutting the door.

"Uhh… I don't think that's any of your business," Steve replied defensively.

"Now what?" she asked softly, her eyelashes fluttering.

"Now… we kiss," he said before leaning in and pressing his lips to hers, their tongues battling for dominance as she snaked her arm around the back of his neck. When they finally broke for air, both had dreamy smiles on their faces.

"In light of recent events we would like to train Samantha for S.H.I.E.L.D. and recruit her as a part of the Avengers Initiative," Fury finished.

"Samantha! You are not going to join S.H.I.E.L.D!" Tony ordered.

"She's –" Pepper began to pick up but found herself being interrupted by Tony.

"Samantha is my daughter," he stated, a large, cheerful grin etched across his face.

It wasn't long before Natasha returned to the room with one thing to say "I just got a phone call, Fury resigned as Director of S.H.I.E.L.D."

"Who's replacing him?" Steve asked, his voice showing a reserved concern unique to only him.

"Coulson," was Natasha's frank response.

"Fury tried to play God and last person who did that tried to destroy New York,"

"Actually Loki was a literal god. Well, a Demi-god but you know he was still God of Mischief and Evil," Samantha corrected.

"That is completely beside the point. Fury did what we were working to prevent. He played God and he needs to be stopped," Steve argued.

"No Fury did what he thought was right to save one of the best agents S.H.I.E.L.D. has seen in years!" Tony retorted.

 **Name:** Audrey Lucille Montgomery

 **Date of Birth:** 11/05/1975

 **Alias(es):** Anastasia Grace Rebecca Abramovitch (1990 – 1994); The Maiden (Code Name)

 **Affiliations:** HYDRA (1990 – 1997; 2001 – 2014)

Since beginning her education, Samantha has proved to disagree with HYDRA morals but also shows great intelligence, gaining herself a double major in Law and Communications from the University of California, Los Angeles.

*Amendment: Despite her clear disagreements with HYDRA ideals, Samantha Montgomery could prove an asset to HYDRA at some stage but only through her own death.

She took in a deep breath and said "Peggy Carter's dead," her voice hushed as she said it.

"My mom worked for HYDRA,"

"What?" he boomed "So this whole thing between us was just a ruse so you could get information?"

She walked closer, she put her hand on his cheek but he just swiped it away "No. I… I didn't know that she was HYDRA until a couple of weeks ago when Coulson told me about it,"

"There's a prisoner," he started, Coulson seemed somewhat uncomfortable with the line of conversation and Samantha had to wonder why "He was a double agent. We need Intel from him but he says that won't give it to anyone but you,"

"You've got quick reflexes, quicker than the average person, right? And you're good at running, probably swimming too. When you were young enough not to fight against it we injected you with serums and then removed your memories of those experiments. But there's a trigger for you to be able to remember it all again," he explained.

"We messed with your genes, made sure to keep things like hair colour and skin colour the same but we messed with the ones that influenced your physical abilities," he answered pulling his hand away from her reach "Things like speed, strength, reflexes, that sort of thing. There was no need to mess with the genes that influenced intelligence because you were already pretty intelligent,"

"We were trying to mimic what was done to Steve Rogers, that's Captain America in case you didn't –"

"Who ordered it?" He stared blankly at her "You can't tell me you don't know who ordered a like that,"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," he mumbled.

"Try me. I've heard some pretty unbelievable things in the past couple of months," she smirked.

"Red Skull," he answered and she had to prevent her jaw from dropping.

"What would you say if I proposed to Pepper?" he asked carefully and quietly, almost as though she were a deer and he was attempting not to scare her. He looked tense and worried.

"Samantha honey. I was wondering when you'd call," her mother said, her tone sickly sweet.

"You're supposed to be dead," the teenager growled, her voice low and gravelly with rage.

"So are you my sweet,"

"Don't you dare call me that. You think you have a right to call me that after what you did? Now where. Is. Steve?" Her tones formed a crescendo of pitch and volume as her anger grew.

"She's your mother, what's going to happen if it comes down to a gun fight or a knife fight?" Coulson asked.

"Same thing as with any other enemy of S.H.I.E.L.D. I'd try and overpower her and make it so that I could bring her in. If it came to a point where I had to choose between Steve's life and hers I'd choose Steve's," she explained, there was no sentiment to her voice at all, this was business.

"Guys I-I shot her, she… she'd dead, I've killed her," she said, the girl had never killed before, that was clear and now she was panicking. Immediately, they exited the car and ran towards the building.

"I am a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and a patriot. Are. We. Done. Here?" she asked, really wanting to escape this oddly claustrophobic room.

The moment she left the building, leaving the journalists behind her, she noted that the street was quiet except for one black limousine. It looked like one of her father's so she thought nothing of it until a handkerchief was put in front of her mouth. Before she had the chance to even think, she had breathed in the chloroform and was quickly sound asleep, being bundled into the black limousine.

"You've been gone for three years Samantha," he said and she looked at him in utter disbelief.

"You have a little sister," her father told her with a smile, the smile that she knew to be the one of paternal love.

"S.H.I.E.L.D. would like for you to continue your training at our facility dedicated to the Avengers upstate. Would you be willing?" he asked and she smiled.

"You know Fury, that might be the best thing I've heard all night,"

"The last thing I remember is leaving the senate hearing, okay Steve? After that, it's all just a blank and I don't know whether that's because whoever took me took my memories or because I got rid of them as some warped coping mechanism. I have to keep reminding myself of everything that I've missed. I have to remind myself that I have a little sister, that Clint has a wife and three kids, that Nat and Bruce are together, that you have a girlfriend. And, the one person who I would normally go to with this sort of thing is being shockingly hostile. So, excuse me for thinking that maybe I have a right to be confused! Excuse me for trying to figure out what the hell is going on and excuse me for thinking that you might understand!" she roared.

"A couple of months ago, I saw a video of a girl who looked almost exactly like you, except she had pink hair. It wasn't until you came back that I realised that it must have been you."

"Nat, what… what happened to HYDRA?"

"It was weird, one minute all of them were there. Then the next they were being killed off one by one. Rumlow was the last one… After Rumlow died, S.H.I.E.L.D. practically threw a party, nobody really cared – HYDRA was gone, there wasn't anything else to it," Natasha explained and Samantha felt somewhat spooked.

"Nat and I started investigating into my disappearance and she's pretty convinced that it was the Red Room that took me."

"You see, we made you our toy. You were fun to play with, you fought at first but then you just… succumbed. With the amount of playing we did we couldn't allow any possibility for you to have children, so we had you sterilised," he answered, his face as stoic as hers had once been. Meanwhile, Samantha was having difficulty pulling herself together after that revelation.

He was going to kill Volkov, he decided. Samantha didn't deserve this, it was killing him that they hadn't found her in time for her to be spared this suffering. He found the cell Volkov had been moved to and walked in, shutting the door behind him. "Ah, you must be the Super Soldier, Steve Rogers, correct?" Volkov said and Steve glared at him "You know she used to tell herself that you would save her? She used to say it in her sleep 'Steve will save me, Steve will save me' it was so annoying. We had to tape her mouth shut when she slept," Volkov said and Steve snapped.

He grabbed a hold of the Red Room recruiter's neck and pushed the man against the wall "How dare you? You bastard!" Steve yelled, wanting so much for the man's head to fall limp against the wall "Samantha Stark is one of the best people you will ever have the courtesy of knowing and you treated her as though she were some play thing. She didn't deserve any of what you did to her. You are the scourge of the earth!"

"Da Vinci made a prophecy on his deathbed. He said that a Stark and a Montgomery would meet and fall in love. From that relationship a daughter would be produced and she would be beautiful, intelligent and – most importantly – undefeatable," Louise explained and Samantha rolled her eyes.

"I got shot Dad," she said almost breathlessly before continuing, her voice louder and more exasperated "I got shot in the shoulder whilst wearing a bullet-proof vest by my ex-boyfriend who it turns out was a Red Room operative sent to watch me and – apparently – de-virginise me. This, after a woman who I thought was my friend revealed herself as yet another Red Room operative. Oh and there's some weird prophecy that somehow can only apply to me. Oh and as if that's not enough it turns out that for the better part of a year while I was missing I was a plaything for some bastard and his co-workers!"

She heard Sam take in a deep breath and knew that whatever it was he had to say, it wasn't going to be good "I don't know how but Bucky was expecting us. The bastard shot Steve and I had to get him out of there as quick as I could,"

She flicked through to an image of Steve, he was smiling his bright laughing smile. She'd said something funny and just taken the photo. They'd had plans to use it as his Facebook profile photo at one point before her mother had kidnapped him. She showed the photo to Bucky, expecting some kind of reaction but, alas, nothing "You see this man? That's Steve Rogers, A.K.A Captain America A.K.A. the man you shot this afternoon. Also, there was a point about 75 years ago when the two of you were best friends," she told him, if looks could kill well than by now Bucky would be dust.

"I don't keep friends," he said in his Russian-American hybrid accent and she continued to glare at him, her eyes narrowed to the point where they were almost slits.

"I… I want to ask Samantha to marry me and I figured I should run it by you first," Steve said and Tony smirked.

Noting that the way seemed clear, she entered the lab but was shocked by what she saw: Her father, tied to a chair, duct tape over his mouth, bleeding profusely from multiple stab wounds, his head lolling to the side on his shoulder. Attempting to set all emotion aside, she put her agent hat on, took her phone out of her pocket and dialled 911, knowing an ambulance would be necessary "911 what's your emergency?" the trained, almost robotic, woman on the other line answered.

 _Dearest Samantha,_

 _You know what you did to my father, Alexei Volkov, and now it is time that I returned the favour. Except it will be worse to do, you will be forced to watch as your father's life falls to pieces._

 _Ta-ta Darling,_

 _Karolina Dvoracek_

 _P.S. Do you like my knife skills?_

"When I interrogated Volkov, Fury told me that Karolina wouldn't be a problem, she was just an accountant, didn't even like her father as far as they could tell. He handed me evidence to prove it – letters explaining how much she hated her father. I had no reason not to believe him," she said sighing "Then, the cops give me a letter they found at the crime scene – one that was addressed to me – signed by Karolina, explaining why she had tried to kill Dad, that it was this misplaced revenge thing because of Volkov's death and I can't help but think that… if I hadn't have brought Volkov in then the attack on Dad wouldn't have happened," she explained, tears starting to fall from her eyes as she finally managed to explain why she had felt so guilty.

"I-I had a plan for this but I feel like this is more befitting, so…" he trailed off as he got down onto one knee, searching his pockets until he found a duck egg blue ring box. He opened it to reveal a diamond ring – cushion cut with a ring of pink diamonds surrounding it, surrounded by another ring of white diamonds – "Will you… you know marry me?" he asked nervously, sweat beginning to form beads across his brow line. She smiled, tears in her eyes as she nodded yes. He slid the ring onto her finger – a perfect fit.

"Good job with the Dvoracek case, even if you weren't supposed to be involved," he said and she rolled her eyes.

"You knew that I wasn't about to just leave it to S.H.I.E.L.D," she responded and he turned to face her "I keep asking myself though, how was she able to get past the emergency protocols?"

"Samantha," he interrupted, a warning look in his eyes but there was something else there: shame, guilt, she'd never seen those appear in the eyes of Nicholas J. Fury before. This was unfamiliar territory for her, possibly for anyone.

"Because – last I checked anyway – the only non-Avengers who had the codes to override them were you, Coulson and Maria Hill," she finished, she'd been desperate to get the words out since she saw him. "And let's face it, Coulson wouldn't do it and nor would Maria, that leaves me with one suspect, so I'm asking you, why did you give Karolina Dvoracek the codes?"

They were hit by a shockwave of the smell as it hit them as they opened the door and then they saw it: a body, one they could only guess was Fury, slumped against a shelving unit, rotting.

"This little girl is Emma Montgomery, your niece," Jennifer stated and Samantha's eyes bulged, how on earth could her niece be here? "Somebody called us with concerns about her, and it's either you two or foster care," Samantha nodded in response, slyly looking up at Steve, wondering whether he had anything to do with this. She looked up at Steve, this time more obviously, could they really look after a five-year-old? With work being the way it was? Steve just nodded, as though he knew all of her worries for this young child off bat.

"Emma?" Samantha said, crouching down to the child's level, the way Jennifer approached her stated that it would be better that Emma go with Samantha and Steve than into foster care, Samantha knew it would be better "I'm Samantha, your aunt, would you like to come live with me?" she asked and the little girl nodded repeatedly, almost excitedly. Samantha smiled to the girl and Jennifer smiled gratefully to her – as though this were some big stress off of her shoulders.

"I'd steal money from her purse and buy Burger King for lunch instead. There was one just on the way to school and I walked there on my own anyway. Mom found out and hit me, pretty hard. My teacher noticed and called Social Services. They noticed the state of the apartment and put me in a foster home. It was run by a couple. The woman, Elise, was nice, her husband, Jeremy, was cruel. He would tell me that I was getting fat one minute and then the next he would tell me to eat more. Then, one night, Elise had to go out and she left me alone with him and I knew, I just knew that…" she trailed off, unable to admit what that cruel man had done to her. She barely felt it anymore – the hurt, the idea that she might be damaged goods – sometimes, on her lowest days, it crept up on her but she shoved it to the side, prioritising everything else over that feeling.

"So what is it I'm in for? Your men didn't tell me when they dragged me in here," she spat bitterly, her swelling cheek throbbing and aching. She glared at the tall, lanky man in front of her as he smiled, his eyes revelling in a cruel taunt.

"Well," he began in his English accent, extending the vowel sound far longer than necessary "You and your friend Miss Maximoff blew up a bank,"

"Then you'd know that there wasn't a second in which I could have blown up that bank, don't you Agent Thompson?" she retorted "And anyway, one of your guys punched me, I have the bruise to prove it," she added, allowing the claim of unnecessary brutality to settle.

Still, Thompson ignored it "Except we have video footage of you and Miss Maximoff leaving the site of the wreckage of the bank carrying $400,000 between you,"

"Samantha I know you, you'd never harm innocent civilians just for money and neither would Wanda, so blowing up a bank is beyond you, now take the bag and run!" she ordered as she uncuffed the brunette who proceeded to run as fast as she possibly could out to Clint's car.

The familiar piercing sensation of a bullet hit Samantha in the back, right in the rib cage and she had to resist the urge to keel over in pain as she ran up the stairs to the roof. She panted hard as the realisation hit her that there was no way out. She listened for footsteps, meanwhile, Skye walked to the edge of the rooftop "Fitz fixed the cloaking device," she called out before jumping off. Wanda followed suit and Samantha – understanding that she was out of other options – leapt from the roof and landed, rather ungracefully, with a thump, bashing her head on a cold, hard surface as what remaining air she had was knocked out of her.

The woman looked down at Samantha's fragile body, glistening tears making their trail down her tanned cheeks "I'm Samantha's mother," she admitted, biting her lip in a vain attempt to prevent further tears.

Skye looked to Wanda then to Fitz and Jemma - who were flying the jet – in complete disbelief "That's not possible. I've dealt with Samantha's mom; I've dealt with the wreckage she causes. Trust me, that bitch is dead,"

"That's what I wanted people to think,"

Samantha was born on 25th March, the same day – and in the same hospital – as Audrey's baby. A lucky coincidence that the Fates decided upon I'm sure. It was on that day that I was called back to Olympus and I switched the two: Audrey's sick, dying Samantha for my beautiful, healthy Maria. I removed all powers she would have as a demigod and manipulated her facial features so that she would look more like Audrey than she would me.

" _Who_ are you?" the younger woman seethed.

That was how the woman came to explain who she was – Artemis, the Goddess of the Hunt, wild animals, wilderness, childbirth and virginity; the protector of young girls and, perhaps most important of all, Samantha's biological mother. That was also how Samantha came to let out a blood-curdling, ear-piercing scream of frustration, anger and – for some reason – fear.

She gripped onto the metal bar on the left side of the bed tightly as though prepping for impact until, suddenly, it got too hot. Quickly, she took her hand off the bar and saw it glowing orange, that same glow that came on freshly welded metal "What the hell?" she exclaimed, confused.

"I guess you're one of us now," Wanda said, a small smile on her face.

"Yeah, what exactly are we? Like do we have some kind of cool super-group name or…?" Samantha joked, still trying to maintain a sense of normalcy. Humour was just one of those things she used as a coping mechanism it seemed.

"Jemma calls us inhumans," Skye explained, seeming almost annoyed by the name and Samantha couldn't quite find it in her heart to disagree, even she could admit that it seemed just a tad alienating.

"S.H.I.E.L.D. have taken Steve, Emma, Tony, Pepper, Sophia and Vision and they're prepped and ready to parade them round as though they were involved in the original bombing,"

"There's always a choice. Yes or no; good or bad; right or wrong. There is always a choice," Samantha responded before turning away to look out the window.

The gun was in her hand, tears were in her eyes, she shook violently as a cocktail of emotion overtook her. The only way to help him was to harm him – oxymoronic, she knew but there it was. She looked into Steve's blue-green eyes "I'm sorry," she said as she pulled the trigger, closing her eyes as the bullet hit his knee. He howled out in pain and she took off at a run, knowing that agents would be on her tail in a matter of seconds.

"Our names are Maria Thomas and Wanda Maximoff. We're deep cover operatives for MI6 and we request asylum from the U.S. government,"


	2. Bad Blood

Samantha Stark knew the elaborate game she was playing. It was like starring in a play – one in which every actor had a license to kill. All she had to do was wait for her cue before entering stage left. She knew her part well and she was good at it too. A large chunk of it was improvisation, however, and quite often she didn't know her cue until it arrived but that was what it was. It was a masterful art. _Her_ art.

She stood off to the side, hidden by the grey stone of the Siberian fortress, watching as Steve Rogers, James Buchanan 'Bucky' Barnes and her father, Tony Stark, were told of Baron Zemo's plot. She'd chosen long ago to stay out of this war but the things Everett Ross held over her head made that impossible. Tiptoeing quietly closer to the scene before her, she heard the Sokovian spy announce "Looking closely at you, I see green in your eyes. Finally, a flaw," and took _that_ as her cue.

"Well _I_ think it gives him character," she stated as she marched out of the shadows and into the line of sight of the four men. "You know Mr Zemo, you've caused an awful lot of trouble. I'd prefer it if that didn't happen again. Tell me why disguise yourself as Barnes for the bombings? Surely there's any number of other who would have sufficed in creating the same kind of conflict,"

Zemo looked her directly in the eye. Meanwhile, her father, Steve and Bucky were blinking with confusion "Miss Stark, I was wondering when you would show up," Zemo said in his Sokovian accent, sounding too devious for her liking.

Still, she smirked cockily responding with "Well you know how I like to turn up at the eleventh hour and all. By the way, you still haven't answered my question," she said casually, throwing it in his face so to speak. "Why Bucky?" she gritted her teeth in something akin to anger. She may not have liked the fact that Bucky had betrayed Steve two ways from Tuesday but she was willing to accept that the two were friends. Any friend of Steve's was as near as dammit a friend of hers and she'd treat them as such too.

"Bucky is the only _man_ who could make the _great_ Steve Rogers break the laws he holds so dear," was Zemo's response and Samantha rolled her eyes.

"Yes, good ole chauvinism, wrecking friendships since day one. You're still not answering my question though. Not really anyway. I mean, I can take all of this back to the Joint Counter Terrorist Centre – God we need to get an acronym for those guys – and MI6 and they'll be pleased. Everett Ross might even throw a party given the shit storm you've caused for all I know. The point _is_ you've done all this and for what? I get that your family were killed in Sokovia, I'd be pissed too. But all this, well, it's rather elaborate and weren't _you_ Sokovian Intelligence? So, I suppose what I'm asking is does it only matter if _your_ family is killed. Because let's not pretend that you haven't killed people in _your_ job,"

Zemo launched at her and she stepped aside, leaving her foot outstretched so that he tripped and fell flat on his face "Oops. Sorry," she said. Momentarily, she looked away from Zemo to see her father staring at a screen. It was a sight she was used to – Tony Stark staring at a screen was like a duck taking to water, incredibly common. The face he was pulling, however, was not quite so common. It was one of sadness, pure sadness.

Then, rather quickly, the sadness turned to rage as he started to beat the living daylights out of Bucky yelling "You killed my mom," Samantha stood for a second, shocked and uncertain of what she ought to do. The next thing she knew, she was being knocked to the ground as Zemo made his escape.

 _4 months earlier_

 _Samantha tapped her foot on the Embassy floor. They had been careful not to place her in a room that was anywhere near opulent in some attempt to make her nervous – she assumed that they'd done the opposite to Wanda. She supposed that the Embassy officials hadn't known that surviving interrogation had been one of Samantha's strengths from the outset. They'd taken her phone, jewellery – everything that could be used as a means of communication. They'd done everything she would have done in her position which meant they were taking her claim seriously._

 _The door clicked open and she was faced with a beautiful woman with red hair pinned up in a tight chignon. She couldn't be much older than Samantha and her perfectly manicured eyebrows that framed her bright blue eyes indicated a high pay check. She smiled politely, a gesture Samantha dutifully returned "So," she began in a posh accent – straight out of Maida Vale at a guess – "You don't exist as an operative of MI6 under the name Maria Thomas or Samantha Stark," Samantha nodded in response "But you already knew that. So why come to us?"_

 _Samantha let out one of those gasping laughs – the kind that she wasn't quite accustomed to giving – and smiled "My biological mother, it turns out, is Diana Thomas, also known as Artemis an employee of MI6. That makes me, by descent, a legacy member of your agency," was her only answer._

 _"That may be how it works in America but not in the United Kingdom,"_

 _"Tell that to your Royal Family then," Samantha quipped and the woman cracked a slight smile._

" _Miss Stark, you have to understand, the only way I could_ possibly _grant you and your friend asylum – and there_ are _grounds for it- is if the two of you were to become MI6 agents," her face was stern and, for some reason (maybe it was the red hair) Samantha was reminded of Natasha._

 _She thought about the proposal for a few seconds, mulling over her options in her head, biting her lip out of indecision and nervousness before answering "Well then Miss –" she stopped, realising that she didn't know the redhead's name._

" _Hannah. Elsie Hannah," was the response and Samantha smiled gently._

" _Miss Hannah, you have yourself a deal,"_

She sat up slowly, clutching her head where it had hit the cobbled floor. She didn't even bother to check for blood knowing that it was most likely there anyway. Stumbling to her feet and dashing off to find Zemo, she ignored the niggling feeling that told her to deal to the situation inside the fortress.

The biting cold hit her as she opened the large, iron doors. She shivered, wishing that she hadn't left her jacket on the quinjet. She couldn't see much except a man dressed as a black cat of sorts who she knew to be the new King of Wakanda, T'Challa. _His_ need for vengeance she could understand. The Wakandans were generally peaceful people, they believed every life to be sacred. Perhaps that was why T'Challa had taken his father's death so hard – because there was no genuine reason for it to happen other than the fact that Zemo, a psycho wild with grief, had made it so.

Samantha felt as though she could trust the Wakandan King – she ought to have been able to at least – and stopping the possible death of her father or Steve was as much a necessity as bringing Zemo into custody. Plus, she was freezing outside amongst the cold air and snow, wearing her t-shirt and skinny jeans.

Marching back inside, she decided to stand off to the side, figuring out her next move. She could see that Bucky's metallic arm – the one the Soviets had built him – was partially amputated. The, she noted that Steve's shield was stuck inside her father's chestplate and anger bubbled inside of her. She gripped onto the wall beside her and squeezed her eyes shut in an attempt to control her rage. She couldn't afford to lose control, not now. She put her hand out in front of her – she wasn't sure why – and quickly found herself in possession of the shield. "Samantha," she heard Steve say, his voice breathy.

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't arrest you now and hand you over to any one of the agencies after you," she growled angrily.

"Your father tried to kill Bucky," Steve attempted to reason and Samantha shook her head.

"Bucky killed my grandmother. He tried to kill _you_ not too long ago. Or did you conveniently forget that part. Surely, _surely_ one man isn't worth all of this,"

"He's my best friend Samantha. You wouldn't know about that sort of thing because you've never been loyal to anyone," he spat and it wounded her. Had she not helped Wanda escape potential death and torture at the hands of S.H.I.E.L.D? Had she not rescued _him_ from the clutches of her own psychotic mother? She grabbed a hold of her left ring finger and spun the diamond ring around until it came off in her hand.

Taking his hand, she planted the ring in his palm "If you really think that about me then this is yours," she closed his palm and pushed past him so she could reach her father, the shield still in her hand.


	3. White Blank Page

_2 Weeks Earlier_

Working for MI6 wasn't necessarily difficult per se. Then again, all Samantha seemed to do was spend the vast majority of her time filing reports and hacking files. She didn't mind it so much, not really. It was a nice break from spying on people and apprehending Red Room operatives, or that's what she told herself. MI6 had been good to her and Wanda. They'd provided the two young women with a flat, jobs (decent-paying ones at that) and safe passage out of the U.S. The fact that the cost of it all was essential servitude to the British government was not lost on Samantha but she remembered Steve's words over the intercom the day the Triskelion fell "The price of freedom is high, it always has been,"

It had been a long, hard day when she came home to find Steve Rogers standing in her kitchen. For some reason – perhaps the fact that the last time she saw him, she shot him in the knee – the very sight of him petrified her. He shuffled from one foot to the other, awkwardly, nervously even. "What are you doing here?" she asked, her voice breathy almost like she was panting for some inexplicable reason.

"I need Wanda's assistance on an op," he responded and she felt disappointment settle beneath her skin like a ringworm. For some reason, she'd been hoping he'd come to see _her_.

She gritted her teeth, trying to avoid revealing her true feelings. Fiddling with the ring on her left ring finger, she stated "You'll have to talk with MI6 about that," For some reason she felt like a child being told off by their parents. "Will S.H.I.E.L.D. even allow it?" she added, concerned for her friend.

"They're going to have to," was Steve's cryptic response. That annoyed the hell out of Samantha. They'd always tried to avoid the cryptic answers. However, she couldn't allow her anger to show.

Sighing, she asked "How's Emma?" Emma, her niece would be turning six and Samantha had a permanent feeling of guilt regarding leaving. The little girl, with her wavy black curls and green eyes that could pierce your soul, had been through a lot – too much for a girl her age – and Samantha felt as though she'd just added to the mile-high pile.

"She's with your dad," Steve replied and Samantha gulped. Her stepmother, Pepper Potts, hadn't long left Tony – insisting on taking their daughter, Sophia, with her – because he was too obsessed with trying to save the world. Suffice to say he wasn't taking it well despite his claim that it was temporary. He hadn't _quite_ turned to alcohol yet but Samantha got the feeling he was close.

Still, she nodded before asking "Why are you _really_ here?" She knew there had to be another reason for his being in her flat. And if she was being honest – and despite what her occupation entailed, she did try to be honest – she knew it couldn't be good.

She watched as his gaze fell to the floor, confirming her suspicions of bad news "You shot me," he said and she bit her lip nervously.

"I was _trying_ to protect you," she said by way of a justification. She'd been telling herself that for three and a half months but it wasn't getting any easier. It wasn't that it was a lie, it was the truth really, but it was a difficult truth for her to keep reminding herself of.

He looked up at her, fire in his eyes, rage turning his face beet red "How do you figure that Samantha?"

She stepped back, worried about what he might do to her. He'd never laid a hand on her before but she'd never seen him this infuriated before. Their arguments had _always_ been verbal but her paranoia was setting in – again.

"The only way I could make sure S.H.I.E.L.D. wouldn't torture you any more or kill you was to shoot you because then they'd think that you were as much _my_ enemy as they are," she explained, feeling guiltier by the second. Steve seemed to soften at that and Samantha started to feel more comfortable "I-I can't even begin to say how sorry I am for hurting you, for putting you in danger, for-for everything really. I-I mean, I'm starting to think that if I hadn't come along, your life would have been a heck of a lot easier. Possibly close to normal even," she added, unsure whether she was softening or worsening the blow she'd dealt.

He put his hand on her cheek, a gesture – a touch – so gentle that she was caught off guard by it "I wouldn't have it any other way though because as it turns out you're the love of my life,"

"W-we can't ever be normal. I-I can't give you children or-or a normal life. We can't even be in the same _country_ for long periods in time without arousing suspicion the way things are," she argued, unsure why she was even arguing in the first place. Here stood a man – a good, honest, handsome man – who she loved and who loved her in return and she was giving him the exact reasons why he _shouldn't_ love her. She could imagine the legions of 1950s housewives face-palming as she spoke.

"Normal was never really my style and as for kids – we have Emma," and at that he pulled her face towards his and planted his lips on hers and she let go of everything she'd been holding in for months, it made her almost weak at the knees.

It wasn't meant to last, however, as her phone rang out its monotonous tones – there was no personalisation in the encrypted phones of MI6. Breaking away from Steve, she quickly rummaged around until she found the offending device "Hello?" she said uncertainly upon answering.

"Have you seen the news yet?" her boss, Rita Ware, said almost urgently and Samantha was left to wonder what was going on "It doesn't matter, I need you to come into my office immediately," was the instruction Samantha received and she knew she didn't have much time to do what needed to be done.

Hanging up the phone, she told Steve "I uh I have to go. Something's come up at work," before picking up her bag and rushing out the door.

The cab ride to Thames House (her second of the day) had a sombre air to it. The driver didn't even _attempt_ to make conversation, normally a rare luxury within London. The only sounds that filled the air were the car's engine and its radio. 10 Downing Street had been bombed. The Prime Minister had been pronounced dead on arrival at St. Thomas's Hospital. His Press Secretary and Communications Director were also dead. Others had suffered either critical or minor injuries – there was no in between, it seemed. The government was a shambles. It was just starting to dawn on Samantha as to why she was being called back into work. She clambered rather ungracefully out of the cab, paid her fare and headed into the building. Inside, everything was chaotic and messy. She tried to get through it as best she could, trying to avoid bumping into people as she went along until finally she reached Rita's office.

She didn't bother knocking, Rita had told her when they first met that she hated the sound the people knocking on the door and so it was something Samantha didn't do. Instead, she opened the door and strutted inside. Rita looked a little worse for wear, not surprising considering. She was on the phone, her hand seemingly digging into her scalp thus ruining her normally perfect, tight chignon. Strands of black hair had come out of it so that she looked almost wild. "Yes, I realise that," she said into the receiver as she gestured for the younger woman to sit in the chair in front of the desk. "I _understand_ that John. Yes, of course," she said before slamming the phone down on her desk "That man is more odious than half of our enemies I swear," she commented before handing Samantha a file. "That file there has the man we're looking at for the bombing. Thought you might know him, he seems he knows your fiancé at least,"

Samantha opened the file gingerly to see Bucky Barnes' face staring up at her "That's not possible. Bucky Barnes is _supposed_ to be in S.H.I.E.L.D. custody. I _put_ him in S.H.I.E.L.D. custody," she said. Bewildered by it all. How on _earth_ could Bucky be responsible for that bombing?

"After you and Wanda were granted asylum, S.H.I.E.L.D. started releasing prisoners – people like Barnes. Between MI6 and a few other organisations, we _thought_ we had it under control, we were able to round up enough of them fairly quickly so we didn't think it was a problem. Clearly, we were wrong," Rita explained and Samantha nodded along.

"I'll see if one of my contacts knows anything. Was there anything else?"

"How's your English accent?" Rita asked and Samantha looked at her with a mixture of suspicion and excitement.

"Not too bad I think," she answered in her best English accent. It was just shy of Downton Abbey which she figured wasn't _too_ terrible.

"Good. You know how undercover work works, yes? Of course you do. Anyway, there's an unwritten agreement between MI6 and Downing Street that one of their employees will be one of our agents. Normally, it's an assistant but the acting Prime Minister already has one so the next best thing we can do is replace the Press Secretary with you,"

Samantha had to do a double take on that one "Why me? I'm hardly qualified and it would look really bad at the moment given the last Press Secretary died only a few hours ago," she argued, for the second time that night wondering why on earth she was so hell-bent on self-sabotaging.

"See, you know these things. You'll be fine. All you have to do is do your job and then phone MI6 if anything suspect seems to be going on." Rita explained and Samantha got a weird feeling she was being set up to fail. Still, she agreed. She'd never been one to shy away from a challenge and clearly she was going to be greeted by one.

She arrived at the Acting Prime Minister's house – if you could call it that, it was more like a castle - the next morning. Steve and Wanda had left in the middle of the night with the idea of getting to Lagos as early as possible. She was sort of used to being alone – it protected her. And she had more important things to worry about like how she was going to make one of England's leading politicians that she was a) English and b) not a spy for MI6.

The house itself was a tall, imposing stately manor with large oak doors and stunning glass windows. She was a liberal at heart and she knew the house was, most likely, the product of a potentially corrupt aristocracy but all of that didn't stop her from admiring its beauty.

Steadying herself, she knocked three times on the door and was greeted by a balding butler with an upturned nose "I'm Olivia Potter, I have an appointment with Acting Prime Minister Reid," she introduced in her English accent, handing her falsified ID to the butler. She didn't know whether he was trained to look for flaws but he still looked from the ID to her and back again. He nodded, handed her her ID back and she made her way inside with a satisfied grin on her face.


	4. I Think It's Gonna Rain Today

_Present Day_

Samantha walked into the Joint Counter Terrorist Centre's Belgian base and was greeted with applause. She winced at it, desperate to shy away from it. She didn't deserve the applause, she'd barely done anything. Were it not for T'Challa, Zemo probably would have escaped and they wouldn't be applauding at all. Steve and Bucky had managed to escape too so she'd done nothing to truly earn the congratulations everyone was forcing upon her. Reluctantly, she smiled, keeping her head down, and headed into Everett Ross's office.

It wasn't much of an office, more like a desk, a phone and a computer in a very grey room. There was nothing personal about it – no photos, no university degrees. Only a gold nameplate with 'Everett K. Ross' engraved on it gave it away as his. She'd wondered why that _was_ in the few days she'd known him. Normally, people only did that sort of thing if they were ashamed of their past or thought their position temporary. She pushed it all to the side, deciding she needed to remain strong – at least for the next few moments "I'm out. Today was the last straw. I'm not going to be your damned puppet anymore," she announced.

He looked at her, analysing her, trying to figure out whether or not she was serious. "I can't let you do that," he told her, running his hand through grey-silvery hair. When she was a teenager, he would have been just her type. She'd always had a thing for older men. Now, she knew better.

"Need I remind you that you _kidnapped_ me to get me here and that sort of extraordinary rendition _is_ illegal. I don't think you'd want the world to know that you held the British Prime Minister's Press Secretary hostage," she bluffed, already able to guess his next move.

"And _I_ don't think you want the British public to know that their new Prime Minister's Press Secretary is really a fugitive," he retorted and she smirked in response.

"I was absolved of that if you recall so see if I care. Tell the world whatever the hell you want, I _don't_ care," she stated angrily before storming out of the room, slamming it behind her. She wasn't sure if he was bluffing but _she_ sure as hell wasn't.

Samantha had gotten the first flight out she could, ensuring that she used the British Passport MI6 had provided her with, the one registered under the name Olivia Potter. She'd left a note by way of a quick goodbye to her father and dashed off. Now, she was driving up the long driveway to Prime Minister Reid's house, it had acted as a version of 10 Downing Street in the aftermath of the bombing until the actual building was rebuilt to a standard that meant it could actually be used. She had to pre-empt whatever strike Everett Ross and the JCTC might attempt to hit her with which implied that she had to tell Reid the truth.

It was mid-afternoon when she arrived and she was glad for the bright morning sun even if it did make it difficult to see anything. Still, it was warm – by British standards – and _that_ was something to be thankful for. Entering through the back, as she always did, Samantha quietly made her way into Reid's office. She stood in the back as Reid issued directives left, right and centre. The room cleared and she stood, awkwardly leant against the back wall. "Ah, Olivia. How is my favourite Press Secretary?"

"I'm your _only_ Press Secretary sir," she responded, a grin on her face.

"I've told you before don't call me sir, it makes me sound like some kind of hoity-toity asshole," he said in his Scouse accent and she smiled, she'd get used to it eventually. "The temp we had in your place is a little too hostile with the press for my liking. The headlines haven't exactly been favourable while he's been on the podium," he said and she smiled again but it didn't quite reach her eyes. He noticed it too, it was something she liked about Prime Minister Reid – he made sure that he noticed everything about his employees, even the person who made him his tea. He was a self-made man, everything he had had been something he'd _earned._ He believed in that whole Enlightenment ideal of merit over birth right, it made him incredibly likeable "What's wrong?" he asked and she bit her lip. It wasn't exactly a difficult question and yet it _was_ at the same time.

"There's… something you should know about me," she began unsure which was the best way to continue.

He stopped her "Is this about the fact that you're really an MI6 agent named Samantha Stark who sought asylum here after being falsely accused of terrorism?" he said it so casually that she almost laughed, she did that when she was caught off guard. At the same time, it was – at least to her mind – rather comical. She nodded. "Whatever it is, I'll stand by you 100%, you have a job here," he said and she smiled graciously, thankful for that one little bit of consolation.

"When I was away, I wasn't really away as such. Umm Everett Ross and the JCTC had me taken in regarding what happened at Downing Street. Some people I knew were, wrongly, accused of being involved. Anyway, I refused to continue doing their bidding and, well, Ross is threatening to reveal everything he has on me which is a lot," she explained and waited, with bated breath, for a response.

"Are _you_ okay?" he asked, looking her dead in the eye with concern.

"It doesn't _matter_ whether I'm okay or not, what _matters_ is that this reflects badly on you. You're only Prime Minister by the mere technicality of the fact that your predecessor died. That puts you on shaky ground as it is when it comes round to election time. The people don't take well to being dumped with a leader. What Everett Ross wants to reveal about me would be a cannonball, no a nuclear missile to any campaign you may hope to have before it even _begins_. They'll make you out to be guilty by association,"

He looked at her, an almost mischievous glint in his eyes "You've known me for two weeks now, do you honestly think I care more about getting elected than I do about what I'm able to do while I'm here? I have this office – or what's left of it – until a point in time when my now dead predecessor would have been forced to run again. What's one little setback at the beginning when we have _all_ kinds of good to do in the long-term?"

Samantha smiled, he was so optimistic it was almost infectious. He was right though and she was beginning to know it too "I suppose I should explain at the next press conference, hopefully I'll be able to pre-empt whatever Everett Ross has in store for me. It'll look better coming from my mouth,"

"There's the girl I let MI6 force on me," he said with a chuckle.

Samantha remembered the first time she'd ever been in charge of a press conference. Her father hadn't long been stabbed and she had barely had a wink of sleep since then. She'd fainted immediately afterwards but this one, she thought, was different. She had a guaranteed job waiting for her, a flat to go home to and no one close to her was on the brink of death.

She smiled from her place behind the podium on the grass. They'd chosen this as the location for all press conferences and briefings because of the fact that it gave off enough of a distance between the press and the government while still making them feel included. Plus, it was pretty out there in the summer. "Ladies, Gentlemen settle down please," she said in her well-honed fake English accent. "At 12.30pm local time, Baron Zemo – a Sokovian national and spy – was arrested in Siberia regarding the bombings of both 10 Downing Street and the UN headquarters in Brussels. After further questioning, it was revealed that he and he alone was responsible for those two events. Our previous suspect, a Mr James Buchanan 'Bucky' Barnes, was innocent. Any questions?"

Hands shot up from all directions as she held their gaze. She pointed to one of the journalists – a girl with black rimmed rectangular glasses and ebony hair "Is anything known about a motive yet?"

"It would appear that Mr Zemo's family was killed during the Battle of Sokovia against Ultron. It seems to have been an act of revenge against the Avengers,"

"Why choose to disguise himself as Bucky Barnes though?"

Samantha sighed, wondering whether the truth would be of any use. It didn't matter now, she decided. If Steve wanted to paint her as disloyal, she'd act disloyal _just_ to prove how disloyal she really could be "Bucky Barnes goes by another name, The Winter Soldier. During World War Two, Bucky Barnes, a friend of Captain America himself, fell from a railway track high up, the Soviets were there to rescue him and took him back to their lab. There, they fixed up his arm with a metal one that worked almost exactly the same way as a human one. They froze him and every few years, they'd wake him for a mission – including the murder of Howard and Maria Stark," she heard the gasps of shock and horror "Zemo knew that should Captain America discover Bucky alive again, he would immediately go after him and attempt to save him. Essentially, Zemo's revenge was to cause a revolution within the Avengers," silently she added the words 'and he succeeded'. She wasn't certain whether or not the Avengers could come back from their civil war, she wasn't even certain whether or not the United Nations would let them after what happened in Germany.

She pointed to another journalist who asked "Where is Zemo now?"

"Currently, he is being held by the Joint Counter Terrorism Centre in an as yet undisclosed location. He will remain there until his trial before a United Nations select committee and a judge at the Hague,"

Another journalist's hand shot up, it belonged to someone who was more boy than man. Surely, he couldn't be older than sixteen. Samantha nodded his way and he smiled gleefully in response prior to asking his question "Do we know anything more about Zemo?"

At this point, no. Any new details will be given to you as they appear," she responded and looked out across the pack of journalists. She gripped onto the podium until her knuckles were white. She thought about how she ought to structure what she said next. "I have one other thing to add. In a few hours-time, a story will break about me that may cast some doubt upon your opinion of me. I learnt long ago that it is better, sometimes, to be early to the party rather than late," she breathed deep and switched out of her faked English accent and into her normal American one "My name is not Olivia Potter as I led you to believe when I first came to hold the office of Press Secretary only a few short weeks ago. It is, in fact, Samantha Stark. I am daughter of Tony Stark and I _was_ a S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent. That is until a few months ago when my own government started to persecute me. Due to the fact that my mother, it turns out, was a British citizen, I was able to gain refuge in this country," she announced. She watched as hands were raised but she waved them away with a simple 'that will be all', choosing to turn around and leave the situation.

She dashed off to her makeshift office, sat at her desk and allowed her face to fall into her hands. She felt almost hopeless, as though – all of a sudden – her entire world had caved in on itself. She heard a swift knock on the door and looked up to see the Prime Minister standing in her doorway, a kind if maybe too jovial smile on his face "Well done," he said "We'll make a Thespian of you yet," she nodded in response, unable to take on his joke as what it was "What's wrong?" he asked for the second time that day. She'd get sick of the question eventually, she knew it, but it wasn't as if she cared in that moment anyway.

"I've finally managed to gain a life for myself here and I've just thrown it all away because Everett Ross may or may not reveal the truth about me," she said with a sigh. It was a difficult position she'd just placed herself in. She knew she was about to be hounded by the press for days, by the very journalists she had – for a short while – held under her domain.

"It'll die down eventually,"

" _That_ sounds like wishful thinking," she responded cynically.

"There's a story likely to break tomorrow. We got wind of it while you were in Siberia. It regards my… sexuality," she gawped at that. The British tendency to avoid the subject of sex and sexual attraction as much as possible both infuriated and entertained her. "It would appear that Geoffrey, an ex of mine from university, is speaking to the press. I don't think Britain is quite ready for a gay prime minister…" he trailed off and Samantha saw his awkward attempt at hiding the anguish in his eyes. She felt sorry for him, she didn't want to but she did.

Normally, she would have told him to just come out but this was a British politician without a title or even a degree from Oxford or Cambridge (he'd gone to London School of Economics but in the eyes of most that didn't seem to matter) – he wasn't exactly the normal person you'd elect as Prime Minister of Great Britain. She thought a moment, trying to come up with a contingency plan. "Given that your relationship occurred when you were in university, you could claim it as experimentation, trying to work out who you are, that sort of thing. However, after that, we'd have to set you up on a bunch of fake dates with women, you'd look like a cad for a while but it wouldn't be too much of an issue,"

He smiled a moment "If you think that's best,"

"Right, well then, you'll need a woman. Someone with a fair amount of discretion. Intelligent too and ambitious – with a career of her own. A pretty woman with a good taste in clothes, voters will get behind the two of you that way,"

"You do realise you've just described yourself, right?"

"That wasn't my intention, honestly, I'm not the woman you want as your beard," she responded nervously.

"I know but it would be ideal, you already know and you can't deny that it might make you look better," he said by way of explanation.

"Yes, at best I'm an opportunist, at worst a power hungry slut," she answered and Reid smiled, almost laughingly, the lines around his eyes crinkled with some kind of joy. Samantha knew that, were she in his shoes, she would not be that calm. Heck, she was stressed just realising what was unfurling.

"Are you _really_ that concerned with what everyone else thinks?" he asked and she smirked.

"It's what the government pays me to be concerned with," she quipped back.

"Come on, I've been provided with two tickets to the ballet. I _had_ planned for my friend to come with me – he has a thing for dancers – but if you come with me then – "

"You're saved from a night of watching your friend flirt with leggy blondes half the night," she finished for him.

"So, you'll go?"

"Well, I've never seen a ballet before,"


	5. Better The Devil You Know

_2 Weeks Earlier_

"You're young," he said in his Scouse accent and she smirked. It wasn't an unusual thing for her to hear. Still, Acting Prime Minister Charles Reid's first two words to her were a comment on her age. She had a witty response for that, she was so used to the comment that the answer was almost second nature now.

"As are you. Prime Minister at 35 and a Scouser, it's impressive," she responded with a cheeky grin as if to let him know that she wasn't a pushover. Still, she gave off a slight deer in the headlights look as she awaited a response.

He chuckled lightly "And so the North/South divide finds its way into my home. Or is it my office now?"

"Both, I think Sir," she replied, grinning as she giggled.

"Please don't call me 'sir'. It makes me sound old and pompous. Just call me Charles," he instructed and she chortled to herself a moment.

"Of course Sir," she said before realising her mistake "Bugger. Sorry Sir. _And_ I've done it again. Is there a chance we can start over?"

"Miss Potter, I believe you and I are going to have some fun together," At that, Samantha looked shocked – she had the job already? "My advisors tell me you're the best person for the job. Were they wrong?" he said, eyebrows raised.

"Umm, I think we'll have to wait and see," she tested, almost nervous.

From there, everything – regarding work at least – was easy enough. All she really did was write a few press releases and then brief the press on their contents. There was a bit of prioritisation of political news stories but she could have done _that_ in her sleep. Some stories – the ones that involved intelligence agencies or crime – were more difficult to explain than others. It wasn't because she didn't understand them but because she understood them _too_ well. It wasn't as if she was fighting off HYDRA or rescuing people from the Red Room's clutches but she was doing _something_ and that something did keep her from being completely bored.

Her personal life was something else entirely. Being asked by a member of the press whether or not the British Government had plans to prosecute the Avengers over what happened in Lagos was difficult to say the least. She'd answered with a firm "The Prime Minister has not made any decision on this matter at this time,"

She hadn't been able to get a hold of Steve or Wanda or even Natasha which only added to her worries. The small conversation she'd had with her father only revealed that things in Lagos had gone wrong (which she already knew) and that _he_ – with his guilt complex the size of a small nation – thought they ought to be held accountable. She agreed, were she in his shoes, she'd want the same thing. She wasn't sure that Steve would agree.

Being in Brussels for the Accords Signing wouldn't be too odd, she'd decided. Yes, Natasha would be there but they'd spoken on the phone enough since Samantha fled the States. Reid said he needed her anyway. There'd be journalists whose questions would need fielding, he claimed, and she would be better at note-taking during negotiations than he could ever be.

In response, she'd told him that flattery would get him nowhere but since he'd asked so nicely, she would come along. That was how she'd wound up stood in the midst of a conversation with Natasha Romanoff and two Wakandan royals "Diplomacy is not really his style," the Wakandan King said in reference to his son, the Prince T'Challa, who stood next to him, seemingly embarrassed.

"I don't think that it's anyone's _style_ , but there's no denying that it's a better option than war," Samantha responded with a cheeky grin on her face.

The Prince smiled before saying "Do you have much experience with war Miss Potter?"

"More than you know, Your Highness, more than you know," she replied before they all dispersed to take their respective seats.

"You seem to be getting on well with the Wakandans," Reid said, a smirk on his face as she sat down beside him.

"Meanwhile _you_ sit here and wait for the speeches to start," she said, nudging him a little as though they were old friends "And anyway, they're good people, you'd _like_ them,"

"And the red head? The one who seems to analyse everything, who's _she_?"

Samantha laughed, thinking that it was her boss's way of admitting to liking the woman he didn't yet realise was her friend "That's Natasha Romanoff, she's the representative for the Avengers, sits with the American contingent,"

"And do we _agree_ with each other?" he asked, eyebrows raised and she smiled.

"She's S.H.I.E.L.D. She likes the idea of the Avengers being able to be held accountable if only because it keeps them in play,"

"Smart woman," Reid replied.

The next thing Samantha knew, she was forcing him to the ground as T'Challa yelled out the word 'duck'. The ground around them shook and, for a second (just a second), Samantha hoped that Skye had turned up and was stopping something.

As the dust settled, however, she realised it wasn't something Skye could have caused. She could smell the explosive scent of gunpowder and as she looked around her, she saw T'Challa crying over his father's lifeless body.

She crawled over broken glass to the blown open window to see a man who looked suspiciously like Bucky. He smiled at her and a chill ran through her. Her instincts quickly went to war with each other in a matter of a split second: Should she dash after him or should she stay in the blown apart building and maintain her cover? She looked at T'Challa, crouched over his father's still warm dead body and immediately leapt from the window.

She'd never attempted the whole 'guided falling' thing before but it seemed fairly simple and it worked out for her rather well as she landed safely on her feet on the pavement. She took off at a run after Bucky. She was quick but not quick enough it seemed. She looked around, the street was too crowded for her to use her powers, not with the little practice she'd managed to fit in.

Bucky just kept on running too but the thing was he didn't run like the Winter Soldier she knew, the one she'd once arrested. The Bucky _she_ knew ran a little lopsided. It was caused, she suspected by the weight of his Soviet-built metal arm. This imposter's arm, however, did not seem to cause that issue and she'd only _actually_ seen his face from afar. Could she really be certain that it was actually Bucky?


	6. Off The Wall

_**A/N – I'm sorry that I missed my normal update day but I did have exams and other drama went down too and let me tell you, your time sort of disappears when you're sitting three exams in as many days. Anyway, it feels really odd to write this (well, type this up – it's been written down for weeks) since the Brexit vote. I realise now that trying to create a world in which spies are tools of diplomacy seems weak particularly when diplomacy seems to fail us at every turn – not least of all now. Maybe that's why this sort of thing belongs in fiction (fan-fiction or otherwise) because as much as we may want the ideal world in which neo-liberal institutions (like the United Nations or the European Union) succeed. Unfortunately, of late, xenophobia and a few other (relatively unfounded) claims have won and, perhaps, only in fiction can the institutions that I believe in (bearing in mind that I voted to remain) be allowed to work.**_

 _Present Day_

Samantha's red dress was the kind of dress that could make a girl feel confident. It was strapless with glittery flowers embroidered all over it. It was probably the most expensive thing she'd bought since being in the U.K. (the result of a trip to Harvey Nichols in her first week, a reward for escaping S.H.I.E.L.D's clutches). She'd paired it with black ankle boots and a black leather jacket that ended at her waist.

She spun around in the outfit for her 'date', a big, beaming smile on her face. "Very nice Stark," She bit her lip, proud of herself and glad that – even on a budget – she could still put together an outfit.

"You don't look so bad yourself _Reid_ ," she said, emphasising the surname for no apparent reason other than that she felt like it. "So which ballet are we seeing?"

"Swan Lake," he answered rather simply and she smiled.

"Ooh I love that one. Well, I've never actually _seen_ it, I've just seen Black Swan enough times to know a fair chunk of it,"

He chuckled at that. She supposed she seemed rather uncultured at this point but she didn't really care. She'd been raised by a single mother in Los Angeles. For a while there, the closest thing she'd gotten to culture was her record collection (which she sold) and the few films she'd bought on sale when Blockbuster went under (may it rest in peace). Ballet wasn't something she'd really been exposed to.

She'd never seen a ballet before but from about five minutes in she could understand why people liked them. She got a little lost in the emotion of it all. She understood every single ounce of pain Odette felt and it may have made her glad that she was wearing waterproof mascara.

"Never seen a ballet before?" Reid said almost disbelievingly and she smiled in response.

"That was beautiful, thank you… f-for taking me I mean," she said, stuttering slightly as they stood up to leave. Everyone filed out of their seats, one by one. Every-so-often a middle-aged would walk up to Reid and say something about how nice it was to see him. Then, Reid would introduce Samantha who would shake hands with the woman who merely glared at her. "They hate me. I told you this was a bad idea," she informed him when they finally got near to their car for the night. Cameras flashed in her face and Samantha looked at the ground, putting her hand over her brow in a vain attempt at covering her eyes.

"They never like anyone at first," he said by way of reassurance.

She rolled her eyes "I just have the added benefit of being a criminal,"

He shook his head, laughing "Their ancestors were all slaveholders and monopolists, I don't think your supposed criminality is the problem," she smiled at him. He paused a moment, thinking and then, with a gasp he asked "Okay, what was the one time you were ever, truly happy?" he asked and she had to think, _really_ think.

She realised, now, that her whole life – every moment in which she ought to have been happy – had been shrouded in a hideous cloak of misery. "Can I get back to you on that?" she asked, leaning her head back against the cream leather head rest of her seat.

"What? Nothing? Not even one trip to Disneyland?" he asked and she shook her head. Regrettably, she knew that every event she could really remember had at least a moment of sadness or had occurred at a time that HYDRA had tried to blank out so she wasn't even certain it was real.

"I think the closest I ever got to being happy was the day I got accepted into Harvard. I'd applied on a whim really, just wanted to see if I could get in and I _did_. But I couldn't tell Audrey because she didn't want me to leave L.A. I didn't know why at the time, turns out she wanted to turn me into some kind of supersoldier so…" she explained.

His eyes widened, as if a lightbulb was going off in his head "Well then, Stark, we are going to have to change that. You are about to experience all of the happy you could need starting with a trip to Euro Disney,"

She laughed, the whole thing was implausible really, so implausible that it was laughable "You can't just whisk me off to Euro Disney! You have to meet with the Russian Ambassador and _I_ have to deal with the press," she argued with him.

He sighed adolescently, and she was reminded of her father somehow "Fine then, we can work around that. You're going to have tea with me and the Russian Ambassador tomorrow," he explained. She was about to argue with him but then he added "It's an order Stark. You'll be able to sweet talk him. My Russian is remedial at best,"

"We have translators for that you know," she retorted.

"And I don't know what is going to be said, I need someone I can trust," he responded and she nodded by way of agreement.

Samantha's outfit was not _too_ different from her normal work attire – a royal blue pencil skirt, matching blazer and white blouse. She smiled at Reid, offering a quick apology before saying to the Ambassador "Dvizheniye v etom gorode strashno (Traffic in this city is terrible)," he chuckled and she grinned, thankful she and the diplomat seemed to get along. She took her seat and introduced herself as Samantha Stark, Prime Minister Reid's Press Secretary. Soon after she sat down, a waiter approached and took their orders.

"Gde vy nauchilis' govorit' po-russki miss Stark? (Where did you learn to speak Russian Miss Stark?)" The Ambassador asked.

"Rossiya (Russia)," she responded. She wasn't certain that it was true but if it worked, it worked. If it didn't… well, then she'd find out. "Teper', chto my mozhem sdelat' dlya vas g-n posol? (Now, what can we do for you Mr Ambassador?)" she asked, getting straight to the point.

"Right to the point, I like her," he said to Reid, swapping to English to address him. "MI6 has one of our men held as their prisoner, we'd prefer it if we had him back,"

Reid thought for a moment "Does he have a name?" Samantha thought about telling him not to humanise the scenario. She wasn't certain, based on the diplomat's cool brown eyes, whether they would even get a name. "I can't exactly call MI6 and say 'you have a prisoner. I don't know his name but he's Russian, can I hand him over to the Russian Ambassador?'" he said and Samantha quickly realised how reasonable the request really was. The two of them, Samantha and Reid, looked at the Russian expectantly, awaiting his response.

"His name is Boris Rachmaninov," the Ambassador answered, sounding grave.

There was something off about all of it and Samantha wasn't a big fan of the sensation it was giving her. She got the feeling that she had heard or read the name before. So many names had come across her desk when she was filing for MI6 that any name _could_ sound familiar but still that didn't mean that they would set off the self-same alarm bells that the name 'Boris Rachmaninov' seemed to. "What is it that the British people get out of this?" She asked, leaning back in her seat "Why on _earth_ should we do this for you when you have offered us nothing in return?" Samantha eyed the Russian, steely and cold. She had no plans to suffer fools kindly.

The Ambassador ignored her, waving her off as though it was nothing "Make whatever phone call you need to make," he instructed and Samantha glared at him.

She stood up, almost immediately, slamming her palms on the table in front of her. She could feel a degree of heat emanating from them and the gaze Reid – and probably several other people – held on her but she wasn't about to let it distract her "Answer my question, what do _we_ get out of this?" She made sure that her voice was low in both pitch and volume. This man – Russian Ambassador or not – was not about to walk all over her or Reid or Britain.

The Russian Ambassador chuckled and smiled at her slyly "What is it that you could want?" he asked and she realised that she hadn't quite thought that part through. She picked up a scone off one of the tiered plates a waiter or waitress had placed on the table at some point or another. She bit into it, not caring that it wasn't the done thing, unsure of what to say next.

"We want a guarantee that Russia will not go to war with Britain while I am Prime Minister," Reid blurted out and Samantha gasped, shocked by the audacity of the request. Even _she_ wasn't ballsy enough to ask for _that_.

"What makes you think that we _would_ go to war with you?"

"Oh come _on_ , you've had a problem with Britain since the moment the day they industrialised. Everyone knows you're jealous because we have nuclear weapons up in Scotland and the U.S. forced you to get rid of yours. So, I'd say we have _every_ reason to think that you'd go to war with us. So you call up whatever little diplomat you need to and we'll get our guys to see what they can do about Rachmaninov," Samantha stated. She and the Russian each took their phones out from their respective hiding places, got up from the table (well the Ambassador did) and made their way away from the table. She dialled Rita's number – having memorised it weeks before – the phone was answered on the third ring "I need a favour," Samantha began, knowing she didn't really have time for pleasantries.

"And I'd like a divorce from my husband but that doesn't seem to be happening," Rita responded. Rita's husband was a bastard and everyone knew it – the kind of bastard who would cheat on a nightly basis and then claim it as a sex addiction. Samantha had met him on one occasion and it hadn't gone well.

"I have the Russian Ambassador here and he wants us to release a man called Boris Rachmaninov. I think there's something off about it but I can't put my finger on it. Fancy looking into it for me?"

She could hear Rita sighing and knew that the outlook wasn't good. She'd gotten to know Rita pretty well over the months – it was her prerogative in her line of work – and she knew that a sigh from Rita was never a good sign. "I'll see what I can do but I doubt any good can come of it," Rita announced and Samantha knew that she, Reid and the Russian Ambassador were just going to have to accept the outcome.

"Okay, thank you Rita," Samantha said before heading back to the table. The Ambassador was still on the phone elsewhere in the restaurant. "I just spoke to my S.O. at MI6, she's looking into it for us but it's not looking good. If MI6 has him, he's not one of the good guys and whatever your non-aggression pact may be, it'll be worth nothing to the Russians from before it's even signed,"

Reid nodded along with her "And you're certain of that, are you?"

"I… yes," she responded, knowing that whatever she said in defence of her opinion could potentially undermine it – less is more, a professor once told her. Her phone rang and Samantha answered it, knowing – without even checking the caller ID – that Rita was going to be on the other end of the line "Why _don't_ we want to hand Rachmaninov over to the Russians?" she asked, knowing that an answer that was arriving this quickly could never be good.

There was a moment of silence before the answer "He's Red Room. Worse still, he was friends with one Alexei Volkov. I believe you know him," To say that Samantha knew Alexei Volkov was like saying chocolate tastes good – a vast understatement.

Out of her corner of her eye, she saw the Russian Ambassador returning to the table. She hung up and put her phone back in her pocket, angry that this man would even _entertain_ the idea of asking them to release such a prisoner "Pochemu vy khotite, chtoby my vypustit' krasnuyu komnatu operativnika? I ne vri mne. (Why do you want us to release a Red Room operative? And _don't_ lie to me.)" She was angry, angrier than she'd been in a while and she smirked at the shocked look on the Ambassador's face.

"How do you even-?"

"How do I even know about the Red Room? I arrested Alexei Volkov when I was working for S.H.I.E.L.D. When I interrogated him, he sang like a canary. So, I know all about 'recruitment' and 'graduation ceremonies'. I know what you do to the young girls you train. So I'd like to know why the Russian government wants to regain an operative of an organisation you claimed died with the Cold War," she stated, panting with something akin to exhileration. Reid put his hand on her arm but she shook it off. There was no way in hell that she was going to be calmed down "If you think for one _second_ that this government will free a Red Room operative _just_ because the Russian government wants it, then you are _sorely_ mistaken Mr Ambassador,"

"Is this the legendary Samantha Stark? The very one that criminals are supposed to fear? You were oversold," the Russian said and Samantha smiled.

"Oh no Mr Ambassador, you've only met the diplomatic version," she answered before standing up, leaving the restaurant and heading towards the nearest bar.


	7. Act Naturally

_Two Weeks Earlier_

Samantha returned to the scene of the bombing. Everything was chaotic. People were dashing about the scene. Paramedics and Search and Rescue were desperately trying to find people, and police were trying to talk to the diplomats who had been there when the bomb went off. Some had a mix of ash and concrete all over their ashen faces, plastered to them with drying blood. She'd never seen anything like it, not in real life anyway. Like many others, she'd seen images of the Syrian Civil War, the aftermath of several bombings (London in 2007) and 9/11. She knew what to expect and – yet – she still wasn't prepped for it.

Someone – she suspected Natasha – had managed to tear T'Challa from his father's body. A pathologist seemed to be examining his body somewhere in the background. Not that it needed examining, the cause of death all seemed rather obvious. Now, T'Challa sat on a grey, concrete bench. Natasha seemed to be consoling him, dust clinging to her long, red hair.

Samantha spotted Reid talking to a man with silvery, grey hair and a pale grey business suit. He seemed out of place with his, oddly, smiling hedgehog-like face. Based on stance alone, Samantha could tell, that this man was an intelligence officer of sorts. He was talking animatedly with Reid and Samantha got the feeling that she ought to step in and ensure that her boss didn't say anything too pejorative. Samantha bit her lip as she headed over, seeing another woman – someone she didn't quite recognise – she too was covered in dust, like she'd been close to the blast. There appeared to be blood trickling down from a cut on her forehead. Her suit – greyed slightly by dust – had once been pink, Samantha guessed, a bright pink that would have looked stunning against her chocolate brown skin. "I was wondering where you'd gotten to," Reid said and Samantha smiled demurely.

"I umm I thought I saw something," she replied, purposefully sounding vague. She didn't know whether her hunch was right and she certainly didn't want anyone else to know that she thought she'd seen a Bucky Barnes look-a-like.

"Forgive me, but what did you see?" the grey-haired man asked in an American accent – mid-western at a guess, probably Maine.

"Oh umm it was probably just a hallucination. I-I think I hit my-my head during the-the explosion," she stammered out the lie as an answer, accompanying it with a kind smile. "What did you say your name was?"

"Olivia, this is Everett Ross, he heads up the Joint Counter-Terrorism Centre and _this_ is Princess Aysha of Wakanda," Reid introduced "Everett, Your Highness, this is my Press Secretary, Olivia Potter," Samantha put out her hand for Everett Ross to shake. He took it and shook it gently.

She bowed to the Princess, saying "I'm so sorry for your loss Your Highness, I did not know your father for long or well but he was a good man." It seemed odd, but Samantha could have sworn that, in that moment, she saw Ross smile. Maybe it was the timing of it or maybe it was because the smile was more like a leer or that there was a glint in his eye that revealed something Samantha couldn't quite identify. All she knew was that she didn't like him.

"Well, I'd best be off, got people to speak to. Here's my card if you remember anything," Ross said and Samantha smiled politely, nodding.

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"We want to offer the Wakandan people our _deepest_ sympathies and condolences and we stand by them in their moment of sorrow," Reid finished. It was a bog standard speech really. Within the next few hours, other countries would jump on the bandwagon. The U.S. would offer to capture those responsible and – most likely – blame immigrants of the Middle East. The French would say that they stood by both the Belgians and the Wakandans. There wasn't much else to be said really. Any promises were actionable and, in the eyes of the people, could not be rescinded.

Samantha stood in front of him, watching and filming. In this moment, he seemed like the kind of leader she could get behind. Briefings like this were rare to say the least. Rarer still was the fact that _this_ particular briefing was occurring in front of a building that had just exploded. "Their King was a good man, a good father, and a good leader. He helped to broker many peace deals over the years and the world is a better place for his efforts. We, the British people, are _truly_ sorry for your loss."

She stopped recording at that point, nodding authoritatively to signal that she had done so. "That was good," she said, almost breathlessly with an encouraging smile on her face.

She heard slow clapping from behind her and quickly turned around. There stood Everett Ross, a smirk emblazoned on his face, and she shuddered involuntarily. Something about this man gave her the creeps. "Was there something you wanted Director Ross?" she asked, eyebrows raised expectantly.

He stepped forward, nodding slightly – so slightly that it wouldn't be noticeable to the untrained eye. Samantha, however, had caught sight of it and she started to stare him down, wondering whether it would have any effect on him. "I was wanting to have a chat with you Miss Potter," he said and Samantha shook her head.

"We're a little busy at the moment," she said as she looked down at her phone, prepping to upload the video she'd just filmed.

It was in that moment that he grabbed a hold of her wrist tightly. "Come on _Olivia_ , surely you have enough time for a little chat,"

She gritted her teeth in a desperate attempt to hold her tongue. "Director Ross, I'd suggest that you get your hands off of me before I _ensure_ that you have a public relations disaster on your hands," She said, trying to lightly shake off his grip.

"I just want a little talk," he said, trying to sound innocent. Samantha wasn't the type to fall for that act. She'd learnt not to a long time ago, it was a lesson that stuck.

"And _I_ want you to get your hands off of me... Now!" she all but ordered. Suddenly, it seemed, Everett Ross seemed to have realised that, in her, he had met his match. He released her arm and she smiled passive-aggressively. It was the kind of grin that belonged on the face of a suburban housewife, not an agent of MI6 – formerly of S.H.I.E.L.D. "Thank you. Now, if this is about the thing I don't know about regarding what happened earlier, then you should know that you know everything I know and _more_. Now, if you don't mind, I have a job to do – a rather urgent one actually – and I'd like to be able to do it," she hissed angrily.

"Woman with a shit tonne of walls up. What's going to happen when I tear them down Miss Stark?"

"You really think that's who I am. Tell me, Mr Ross, are you by any chance related to Thaddeus Ross?" she asked and, upon not receiving a reaction from him, she smiled "I'll take that as a no which is good because, if I were Samantha Stark – which I'm not – I would make a phone call to my father who is pretty friendly with Thaddeus Ross and ensure that he persuade Secretary Ross to have you fired. But I'm not Samantha Stark so suppose _you'll_ never find out what happens when you tear her walls down." She lied with a smile on her face.

"I will Miss Potter and _you'll_ regret the day you ever crossed me,"

"Big talk for such a short man. Get rid of that title, what are you?" she asked, channelling Steve. She'd heard of the legendary showdown between her father and Steve and this seemed to be the perfect moment to rephrase Steve's line.

He stared blankly at her and she smirked, knowing that, for the moment, she'd won.


	8. Whiskey

_Present Day_

Samantha sat at the bar, scotch glass half-empty in her hand, her elbow resting on the smooth mahogany surface. She looked around her and noted that everything else – from the walls to the floor and everything in between – seemed to be at least painted that wooden colour, if not made from Mahogany or something Mahogany-esque. She couldn't help but wonder how many trees had been sacrificed for the sake of this bar.

The staff were used to people like her – government employees gasping for a glass of liquid courage, for an escape from the everyday. They were regulars, she knew, the bar's bread and butter so to speak. She looked back down at the amber liquid refracted against the crystal walls of the glass. She tried to think of the last time she'd reached for a scotch, it had been a while. Even when she first arrived in the strange country with rules so different from the one she had grown up in, she'd managed to avoid resorting to it. Aside from the three years of her life she couldn't account for, Samantha thought that maybe the last time she'd done something like this – sat and drank in a bar out of sheer desperation – was after Peggy Carter had died and she'd been with Steve. She'd been so naïve then, she hadn't yet realised the cruelties that the world had already offered her.

"So, are you going to tell me what _that_ was all about?" Samantha heard Reid's voice, his own way of announcing his presence. She looked up and then back down at her glass, sighing. She didn't really want to have to retell the whole story – most of which she still didn't know – to her technical employer.

"I suppose this isn't the kind of condition my boss ought to see me in," she said, still staring at the glass. Reid perched himself on the stool beside her and ordered a drink from the barman – a beer, one of those with a German sounding name, it could have been Belgian. "Last night, you asked me to tell you one time when I was truly happy and, the truth is there was never a time in which I was," she began "Truthfully, my life has been one big mess from day one."

"It can't be _that_ bad. I mean, you seem to have come out of it relatively unscathed," he said and she scoffed. To say something like that to her was laughable really, she knew that much.

So, she told him everything, the whole story – HYDRA, Audrey and Artemis. About the testing, her father and the day S.H.I.E.L.D. came a knocking. About the car wreck she thought had taken her 'mother' and how, for so long – too long really – she had blamed herself. About the Red Room, Karolina Dvoracek and Sophia. About Emma and Ward and Steve.

"So… this Boris Rachmaninov guy…" he trailed off in a search for words, shocked by the amount of information he'd just had dumped on him. It was a lot to take in, she knew. Had it not been for the fact that she lived through it, and knew it had happened, she probably would have been shocked by it too.

"Potentially kidnapped me, yeah." At that, he took a final swig of his second drink. "The worst part is I thought I could get away from it all but it just keeps on coming back."

"And Steve? The two of you just split up?"

"I handed him the ring back there and then. I am many things Reid but _disloyal_ is not one of them. Thompson would have killed Steve if I didn't shoot, I'm certain of that just like I'm certain that if I allowed myself to be captured by S.H.I.E.L.D. I would have revealed things about him that no one ought to know. Truth serum isn't just something that exists in Harry Potter. It's _dastardly_ stuff," she breathed, ordering another two drinks from the barman.

"And your dad?"

"He knows everything except for Diana's real identity. I don't think that he could take being told that yet another woman had lied to him, that I had yet another woman claiming to be my mother. Not with everything that's going on." Her phone started buzzing – long buzzes, a phone call. Digging through her blazer pocket, the silk lining soft against her hand. Once she located it, she checked the caller ID: her father. "Speak of the Devil and he shall appear." She joked, receiving a half-laugh in return "I'm going to have to take this," she hopped off the bar stool and made her way over to the corner of the room. She pressed the answer button. "Hi Daddy!" she exclaimed a little too gleefully.

"Are you _drunk_?" Tony Stark asked incredulously and she giggled. To his knowledge, she rarely got drunk these days. He'd prided himself on that as a signifier of his parenting skills, he'd succeeded where Audrey had failed.

"Maybe," she slurred "What's up?"

"You left me in a hospital with a note. You announce your identity at a press briefing and you went out on a date with the British Prime Minister last night, is there anything I've missed?"

"Ooh the part where I pissed off the Russian Ambassador because he wanted MI6 to release a Red Room operative," she responded almost excitedly "You weren't supposed to know that part. Anywho, _why_ are you so intrigued by the many, _many_ different aspects of my life?"

"You're my daughter and I'm concerned about you. I mean, you're in a new country with a new job and you just broke up with your fiancé,"

"And I'm fine," she stated by way of reassurance. She knew she was lying but, at this point, the conversation needed to end and – in her eyes – the best way to do that would be to lie.

"You're day drinking," he pointed out and she scoffed.

"Like you can talk. Nat told me all about why you _really_ gave Pepper the helm of Stark Industries. How you thought you were dying, she told me about how Rhodey basically saved your ass in front of the Senate, how you were _so_ drunk at your birthday party that you all but _destroyed_ the mansion. Compared to that, I think I'm doing fine."

She didn't even have time to think before her father blurted out his next sentence "Steve sent me a letter for you."

"I don't want it," she said with such resolve she shocked even herself.

"I don't think – " he began but she stopped him.

"That bastard called me disloyal despite the opposite being proven to him. Clearly, despite everything, I meant nothing to him so just burn the letter, rip it into a thousand tiny pieces, do whatever with it. I don't care, I just, I just don't want to see it," she said. She hadn't properly realised the effect Steve's comment had actually had on her. She knew he'd only meant to wound her with it and he had but the damn thing was starting to ooze and pus was starting to shot which meant one thing: infection.

"See _that_ tells me you're not fine,"

She thought for a second before pulling one of the most childish stunts of her life. "Look Dad, the uh the Prime Minister needs me."

"No he doesn't."

"The Russian Ambassador's pissed, I'm gonna have to go. I love you," she lied before hanging up and returning to her spot at the bar.

Reid looked up at her "Everything okay?"

"My lovely ex thinks he deserves the final say in everything and decided to use my dad as the messenger," she responded with a sigh as she plonked herself down on the bar stool and ordered yet another drink.


	9. All Along The Watchtower

_One Week Earlier_

Samantha woke on an unfamiliar bed. It was lumpy, a single and definitely not the one in her flat. She sat up slowly, swinging her legs over the edge and rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, wondering how the hell she'd gotten herself into this position. Had she been drunk? Had she had a one-night stand? No, she couldn't remember touching a glass of alcohol _or_ going into a bar after work. What had happened to her? Had she been kidnapped again? She certainly hoped not. The last time had really screwed her over. "I was wondering when you'd wake up Miss Potter or is it Miss Stark? You know, you've got enough aliases to sink a ship," she heard, recognising the voice, and looked around to see Everett Ross standing in the corner of – what she now realised was – a very grey room. She was currently the subject of an extraordinary rendition, a governmental kidnapping if you like. She glared at him, wondering how long he'd been standing there, whether watching her sleep got him off somehow. "Well, aren't you just a ray of sunshine?" he said sarcastically.

"If this is about Brussels, I've told you I don't know anything," she spat. She couldn't be bothered to protest his use of her real name. She should have known that he had her figured out. Were she not so angry, she would have even deigned to be impressed.

"They told me you were intelligent Miss Stark. Your fiancé is a very difficult man to deal with when he wants to be," he said and she rolled her eyes, smiling, proud of Steve. Of course he was difficult, he was as stubborn as a mule and as strong as an ox "We want – no _need_ – you to go in there and ask him why on earth he thought _helping_ Bucky Barnes was a good idea."

She kept her mouth shut, looking him right in the eye and shaking her head. She wouldn't make herself out to be some kind of villain just so Everett Ross could be a hero. It wasn't in her nature. "Surely you want to see him," he taunted but she stared blankly, she wasn't going to give up just yet. "Your father's here _and_ Natasha Romanoff. Sam Wilson too."

She turned her head away from him, looking down at the pillow her head had just been on. She didn't want to look at him. "I'll tell the whole world your identity."

A part of her didn't care about the loss of her new life, not if it meant being used against Steve. Another part of her realised that she couldn't quite handle that loss, not when everything was still so new. Weighing it all up, she nodded "Fine but I want your word that it won't be recorded in any way, shape or form."

He extended his hand out to her and, reluctantly, she shook it.

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They'd shoved her in a white floral dress and white gladiator sandals. Apparently, it was the only thing they had in her size. She was a size 6, did the JCTC only hire women who were a size 0 or something? She'd convinced herself that Steve would know that something was up. She'd never wear anything like this were it not forced upon her. He was a smart man; he knew when he was being played.

Was she really playing him though? She couldn't tell. All she was doing was trying to guide him in a certain direction _even_ if she disagreed with that particular direction, right?

She stood in the doorway, breathing in for a second before heading inside. She shut the door behind her and saw her fiancé and Sam Wilson look up. Steve stood up and, almost immediately, she was being scooped up in his big, strong arms as she hugged him. "Are you okay?" she asked, having taken note of a few bruises and scratches on his face, nearly breathless with relief.

"Yeah, a couple of bruises – nothing to write home about – you?" he asked and she nodded wordlessly, unable to properly verbalise anything.

"What am I? Scotch mist?" she heard and looked around to see that the words had come from the mouth of Sam Wilson.

"Hi Sam," she said with a slight giggle. She was abruptly put back on the ground. "Look they – they sent me in to tell you Bucky's the bad guy in all this," she began and saw Steve glare at her. "I said that's what they told me to say. Realistically, I should. There I've warned you of what Everett Ross believes. Now, my theory is a little different. I don't think Bucky did it."

"What do you mean?" Sam asked and she smiled, realising that she knew something they didn't, wanting to hatch some kind of not-so-sinister plot with them. This was the kind of thing she missed about S.H.I.E.L.D. if nothing else.

"Seconds after the U.N. bombing, I saw someone who looked like Bucky so I followed him. I wanted to figure out whether he was _really_ involved or not. But it couldn't have been him. I've seen Bucky walk, watched him run away from me. The man I was chasing after, it wasn't Bucky Barnes. His gait was all off. His arm – the Soviet one – it was too light, it didn't throw him off kilter that tiny, insignificant bit the way it normally does," she explained.

"So, you're saying you think Bucky's innocent?" Steve asked. He was hopeful. She still loved that about him, that after all that he had seen he could still be hopeful. It amazed her. She felt like there wasn't much to hope about anymore.

She bit her lip, trying to figure out how to put everything she had to say into words. "Officially, no. I'm – I'm in a tricky position. If I put a foot out of line, I'm screwed," she tried to explain and, upon seeing the look of disappointment in Steve's eyes, added "But, off the record, the answer's yes."

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She stormed into Everett Ross's office, he was staring at his laptop. She heard a Sokovian accent and a more familiar Russo-American one. "I'm not doing that _ever_ again for you or for anyone." He shushed her, putting his finger to his lips. " _Un_ believable. It won't work you know. I've tried, it didn't work and _I_ had leverage. He doesn't remember anything. The Russians really did a number on him."

He paused the live feed of the interrogation and looked her in the eye. "Miss Stark, need I remind you that I am very willing to reveal your little secret to the world?"

"And need _I_ remind you that you've forced me here against my will? Your bosses at the U.N. won't be very happy about _that,_ will they?" she retorted angrily "You need me, that's why you _dragged_ me all the way out here. So, the way I see it, I have the cards in my hands and you ought to agree to my terms. If you use me against my fiancé again, I tell the U.N. Security Council about your _highly_ illegal use of extraordinary rendition." She leaned over Ross's desk, slamming the laptop shut. "And I have the ear of the British Prime Minister, so don't think that I won't." She didn't have time to get an agreement because that was when the alarm began to sound.


	10. WALLS

**A/N - Sorry this took so long (I know, it's been forever). Honestly, it's been sat on my hard drive for forever so I don't really understand how I didn't publish sooner. I promise you, I'm just going through and editing the next chapter so it shouldn't be too far away.**

 _Present Day_

Steve's letter arrived, along with Tony himself, on the doorstep of her flat the day after her drunken non-exploits. She rolled her eyes "I don't have time for this. I have work," she said with annoyance when she saw him. This was the last thing she needed when she was trying to deal to the hangover from hell. Apparently, being the daughter of a goddess did not mean you garnered the ability to not get hungover.

"No you don't. I spoke to your boss, he's very kindly given you a mental health day," Tony stated and she sighed "Plus, if you don't skip work, then I have to explain to two little girls that you don't want to see them." It was such a hideous taunt, a low blow too. He knew she didn't have the heart to let her sister and her niece down.

She was about to sigh in defeat but then she saw the envelope in his hand. "What's that?" she asked. It didn't matter though, she knew what it was – she could make out her name in Steve's curly, loopy handwriting. "I thought I told you to destroy that."

He proffered the envelope towards her, simply saying "You should read it." She snatched it from his hands. Her own shook as she tore the envelope open. She dragged the paper, written on in the gorgeous cursive she'd always admired.

 _Dear Samantha,_

 _I understand if you're angry and don't want to read this but this, all of it, has to be said and if I can't say it to your face then I figured I should put it in writing._

 _I love you, in spite of what I said. It was never that you were disloyal because you weren't, you're not. I just said it in a fit of anger. No, darling, you follow your head. That's why you went over the fence and into the British Embassy. It's why you became the Prime Minister's Press Secretary. It's why you did what Ross asked you to do. I get it. You've never really known to do anything else._

 _I get why you're angry. With me and with Bucky. He took away any_ real _chance you ever had at knowing Howard or Maria. I never knew your grandmother but I get the feeling that you would have liked your grandfather. In one sense, he was very like Tony – everything was a joke, well funny things were, and he had a way with women. Like I said, you would have liked him._

 _You're probably angry with Bucky because he shot me. don't be. I came out fine at the end of it, didn't I? Even if that was down to you saving my ass. But you should know that, before the Russians and HYDRA got a hold of him, Bucky was a good man, I think he could be again if we just let him._

 _I don't know whether we can come back from this. You're going to be pissed at me over everything for a while but if you can forgive me, come find me. If you can't, well then, we had a good run of it._

 _Send my love to Emma,_

 _Yours,_

 _Steve._

She stared at the page a second, her cheeks wet with tears and red with something akin to rage and, maybe, embarrassment. The damned letter had just made her angrier. "You okay kiddo?" her father asked and she looked up, tearfully shaking her head. She was wrapped up in a hug and she felt like a teenager again, sat on her father's couch after the police had left, being told – once again – that she'd be okay. Somehow, she didn't think she would be though.

"D-do you think it's all worth it? All these things we do? Is it really worth all of the mess we leave behind?" she asked "I mean, we risk our lives every day and why? So that less people die? That's great and all but is it really worth the heartache and pain?" She was beginning to think of Steve as incredibly selfish. They needed accountability, contrary to what he may have thought. All of them did. She wanted Bucky to be held responsible. Because of him, she'd never gotten to know her grandparents and there were countless others like her who were without relatives because of James Buchanan 'Bucky' Barnes.

"I don't know," her father responded, an answer that didn't help her one bit.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

They'd found a spot at the zoo where they could eat the Fish and Chips they'd gotten from a nearby stall of sorts. "Ugh what is this crap they've put all over the fries? It looks disgusting," her father complained.

Samantha laughed heartily, rolling her eyes. She'd missed this sort of thing and she hadn't realised it until that very moment. "They're called chips over here Dad and that so-called crap is curry sauce. It's good, you should try it," she said, purposefully dipping her golden yellow chip in the congealed greenish-brown goo before taking a bite. She looked at Sophia and Emma as they fed a few slices of bread to some ducks. She didn't want to tell them that the new research out was saying that giving ducks bread was as bad as handing an overweight kid a Big Mac. It seemed too cruel.

"How's Emma doing at school and things?" she asked, changing the subject.

"She and Sophia have a little competition going on to get to top of their class. They're tied for first," he said "She hasn't really made any friends," he added, concerned, and Samantha was reminded of the mothers the last time she'd picked either of the girls up from school, before she'd been forced into exile. According to _those_ women, young girls ought not to act like they had a modicum of intelligence lest they intimidate one of the boys. Clearly, no one had taught them that school was a place of learning and _not_ just designed to find future husbands.

"What does her teacher say?"

"The typical spiel; kids will be kids, that sort of thing." Samantha nodded along, she knew that one all too well. Audrey had told her that a few too many times when she was a kid. "Look, there was another reason I came to visit," he said and she looked at him, confused.

"Okay, so long as it's not 'I'm dying'," she said it so casually, like it was a joke. He paled, looking at the food gravely and, immediately, she knew "H-how long have you known?" she stuttered, uncertain whether she was angry or just plain upset.

"A few days. The doctors in Brussels did a full scan on me. They think it's the beginnings of liver failure," he explained and she bit her lip, desperately trying to hold back tears.

"B-but you have options right? I-I mean you could get a transplant or-or surely we've got some kind of miracle drug that could help," she almost begged. Steve had just left her in the lurch, she couldn't lose her father too. She needed him far more than she was willing to admit.

"My history means that I'm on the bottom of the transplant list and I wouldn't fit the criteria for any miracle drug that might exist," he responded and she gave up trying not to cry.

"I could be a match. You could have my liver or the 80% of it I could give up without dying," she pleaded, not caring that people were starting to look at her funny.

He shook his head. "I don't want to put you through that. Now, Pepper and I have talked it through and we realised that it would be best if someone else looked after Sophia. I don't want her to see me like that and Pepper's busy with Stark Industries so we thought that the best person was you."

"So you're giving up then?" she almost shrieked. How _dare_ he? Didn't he realise that they, all of them, needed him? "Y-you're just giving up on everything? Y-you have a life; this isn't just about you anymore. You have a daughter, two of us in fact and I'll be damned if you're going to abandon her. You didn't get much of an opportunity to raise me but you have one to raise Sophia," she said, standing up.

"Samantha," he called after her and she shook her head.

"I-I can't even look at you right now," she said turning away.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

She showed up at the door, her heart jumping out of her chest and into her throat. She couldn't seem to rid the tears from her eyes and it was upsetting her even more. She knocked three times on the door. All she could say when he opened it was "I didn't know where else to go."


	11. Getaway Car

**A/N - See, I keep my promises. Chapter 10 is up and Chapter 11 shouldn't be too far behind it.**

 _One Week Earlier_

Samantha didn't need to wait for Everett Ross to give the go ahead. She just ran, following her instincts at every single turn until she found herself in the building's lobby. She didn't give herself a moment to look around at her very clinical surroundings as she saw Bucky, his metal arm glinting at her in the harsh Belgian sunlight refracted through glass windows. He was in the midst of a fight with her father and she yelled out "Hey! Bucky, I wouldn't do that if I were you!" and the Winter Soldier released his vice-like grip on Tony's arm, thus distracting him long enough for Natasha to jump him, wrapping her legs around his throat – her signature move. It was mere seconds before Natasha was on the ground and Samantha took the opportunity to run at him and land a powerful kick to his abdomen, pushing him back and through a window, leaving glass shattered across the pavement beneath him.

He smirked, standing up and running at her. She ducked out of the way just in the nick of time. "Bad idea." He warned and she rolled her eyes, sliding through the gap between his legs before springing onto her hands and using them as a launch pad to flip over him, creating a barrier between Bucky and Natasha.

Quickly, she was able to land a punch to his cheek, bouncing on the balls of her feet. He glared at her this time and she yelled for the others to remove everyone from the general vicinity. He approached her, coming into close proximity – she could feel his breath on her. Still, she grinned, lifting her knee and hitting his stomach, leaving him doubled over in pain. She seized the opportunity and jumped on his back, ensuring that she held her arm tight against his throat. "Samantha!" she heard the familiar voice and looked up to see Steve "Let him go," he instructed.

She couldn't do it, not without making it look like she'd been defeated "Throw me," she whispered in Bucky's ear and he did as he was told. She was tossed across the room like a ragdoll thrown by a child in the midst of a tantrum. It took a moment for her to catch her breath again, her chest heaving but by the time she was able to sit up, they were gone.

She didn't know what to feel: relief or anger? Who was she angry at? Was she angry at herself for letting Bucky get away? Was she angry at Bucky for actually getting away? Or was she angry at Steve for putting her in the kind of position where she felt she _had_ to letBucky get away?

Samantha ran her hand through the back of her hair, feeling a sticky liquid on the pads of her fingers. She didn't need to look at what was on her fingers to know that it would be the colour of blood. She didn't care, the wound was superficial at best, and she couldn't help but feel like she deserved it. Just then, her phone buzzed and she rifled around in her bra until she found it (to her, it really was a magical hiding place). A few button presses later and she found a text.

 _Meet me under the bridge at Chaussee de Mons at 3pm. Come alone and bring guns. XO_

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Samantha tapped her fingers on the steering wheel as she waited. It was weird, she realised, that someone else's habit that had, only months previously, infuriated her had become something she'd adopted. She had a fair idea as to who had sent the message and had complied as best she could. The guns weren't exactly up to date. In all actuality, they were older than the pilot episode for Full House. They were clean though and the likeliness of anyone figuring out that said guns – which were only standard issue in 1985 – were missing was slim.

She heard the rev of an engine and looked behind her. Steve, Sam and Bucky were sat, cramped into a little, diddy navy Volkswagen Beetle. She laughed to herself for a moment as she got out of the car. "I could get in a _lot_ of trouble for this," she taunted as she opened the trunk. Steve smiled at her, thankful for the favour. "They're a little outdated I'm afraid but they're clean and they work." She said before taking a brief look at the car and laughed again.

Steve looked at her, squinting her a little, confused "What?"

"A VW Beetle? Really? Do you guys even realise how ridiculous you look? Do you even _know_ how to go on the run?" she managed to say through uproarious laughter.

"Laugh all you want but it's really difficult to find a getaway car in this place." He responded and she giggled at his version of a defence.

"Come on, you know I'm just kidding," she said with a pout. He nodded, a shy smile on his face. "I love you," she reminded him and was almost immediately rewarded for it as he pulled her closer to him, gently cupping her cheek with one hand, bringing her face closer to his and clamping his lips onto hers. There was something desperate about it, like neither one of them was entirely sure whether or not this would be their last kiss. She was the one to break away, glancing sideways through tear-filled eyes to see Sam and Bucky cheering and whooping. She smiled a small smile for a moment, despondent and heartbroken as the realisation dawned on her that she may never see her fiancée alive again "I-I need to know that you're sure." She stuttered through sobs.

"About what?" Steve responded curtly and Samantha glanced carefully at the second vehicle.

"You know exactly _what_ Steve. If you go off with Bucky now, you can't come back from it. You'll be a fugitive. You'll be hunted like some kind of criminal and you and I both know that's not fun. Fury isn't here to protect you this time."

"This is about Bucky?" he confirmed.

"Of _course_ this is about Bucky! Last time I saw him we were beating the crap out of each other. Time before that I gave him a concussion because he'd _shot_ you with a bullet loaded with anthrax! So yeah, excuse me for being a little _concerned_ that my fiancé is going off with a Russian assassin." She all but screamed.

"And yet you never stopped me from going off with Natasha!" he argued back.

"Because I know where her loyalties lie! I know that I can trust Natasha better than I trust myself!" she yelled, angry that the comment even had to be made. She sighed, this wasn't exactly how she'd planned for this to go. "Look, I just… if I – God forbid – if I have to identify your body in a morgue somewhere down the line, I'd prefer to do it knowing that you were sure of what you were doing."

"Of course I'm sure," Steve responded, exhaling noisily as he did so. She bit her lip, annoyed at herself over the fact that she'd questioned his judgement even for a second. Of course he was sure. For as long as she'd known Steve Rogers, he had never done a single thing he wasn't absolutely sure about. "I'm _going_ to be okay you know." He said by way of reassurance but she couldn't trust it.

"You can't promise me that. Neither one of us can promise that we'll be okay." She replied, she wasn't about to delude herself into thinking that everything was going to be okay, that – one day – they were going to be together again and become one big, happy family. She was too pessimistic, she'd seen too much, to be able to even _force_ herself to believe that things would be okay.


	12. I Wanna Get Better

_Present Day_

" _I didn't know where else to go."_

It was all she said, all she could _think_ to say – how cliché. But what was she supposed to say when she showed up on her boss/fake boyfriend's doorstep with what could have been tears or could have been sweat running down her cheeks? Still, she could have thought of something more original. How had she even gotten to this point? Literally, she wasn't entirely certain whether she'd run from the park, whether she'd gotten a cab or whether she'd discovered some wholly new form of transportation and used that.

Charles Reid didn't seem to care. He didn't bother questioning her, assuming that this was just another Adventure in the Life of Samantha Stark. At least she was sober, a change from the antics of the day before. It was a brief reprieve, he guessed. It meant she had been more focussed on getting away from whatever the hell kind of scenario she'd been dumped in this time rather than desperately trying to find a bar.

He'd given everyone the day off anyway – even his secretary (he figured he could answer his own phone every once in a while). It was a Saturday, the majority of his staff had lives and wives and husbands and children and dogs and cats. They didn't need to come in. There didn't seem to be any urgent crises on the horizon. Israel and Palestine were unusually calm, and North Korea weren't threatening nuclear war for once. Parliament was still getting along in the aftermath of the bombing. Heck, even the Foreign Secretary had managed to keep it in his pants and off the front pages – a miracle in and of itself. Charles had even managed to, surprisingly, catch up on some reading before Samantha turned up. His copy of The Things They Carried lay on the coffee table in his living room.

He led her inside and into his office. The room was lined with books filling up the shelves entirely. She loved that room, he knew, she always found a new book to admire on the shelf. If tradition went as it had for the past few weeks, he'd offer to lend the book she found and she'd tell him that it was an entirely fruitless exercise because she'd read them three times already. He liked that, that they'd made up their own system. It was fun, or at least it was for him.

As predicted, Samantha examined the books, running her hand along the spines until she came across one she recognised, a silver-spined book with red font emblazoned across it. He knew the book fairly well. "I didn't pick you as the type to read Susan Faludi." She said, sounding surprised, the book – Backlash – in her hands. She had a curious smile on her face. He'd come to know that look pretty well, based off of that look, he got the impression that she would have made a good journalist if she'd ever wanted to.

"It's not bad as fare as feminist literature goes." he said as he poured her a glass of whiskey – Talisker, 21-year - from the drinks table he kept in the office, not entirely willing to admit that he'd only made it half way through before he gave up on reading it, too affronted by what he'd read on the pages. He was never happy with himself if he didn't manage to finish a book, it felt like a failure. He wasn't a big fan of failure, he supposed nobody was. However, Charles Reid had failed at very few things in his lifetime, even if he somehow managed to succeed by sheer accident, and he wasn't very willing to start failing.

The amber liquid refracted against the sides of the crystal glass when he handed it to her. "Care to tell me what's going on?" he asked as gently as his gruff Scouse accent would allow.

Samantha sighed, looking decidedly forlorn. She couldn't quite figure out how to word it. She knew the obvious answer: her father was dying. He was dying and there wasn't much she could really do about it. Still, how did you explain that to someone? "My-my dad," she began, both hands clasped around the glass as though it were her only lifeline "He's… his liver is failing and he's not eligible for any kind of transplant list so…" she stalled uncertainly, once again wondering what the hell she ought to say next. Tears were threatening to spill from her eyes and she tried to hold them in but to no avail.

"Let me guess, he's not accepting organ donations," she nodded in response "And he wants you to look after Sophia as well as Emma so he can die with dignity?"

"Have the two of you been talking about _this_ too?" she quipped back, only half-joking. The way _she_ saw it, if her father and her boss had had one conversation, they might as well have had all of them.

"My dad pulled a similar stunt when I was about 13. He found out he had lung cancer and sent me and Mum off to live with his sister. Didn't want us to see him as weak I suppose. Knowing Mum, she probably fought tooth and nail against it," There was a beat – a moment – then, in which they understood each other. Reid shook his head as though shaking off the memory before asking "So, what are you going to do?"

Samantha's heart hammered, her breath suddenly became ragged and she found herself bringing her glass to her lips, taking a large gulp. She hadn't thought that far ahead. She rarely ever did, she tended to act on instinct and think about the consequences as and when they happened. In this case, she'd just done what she did best and ran. Suddenly, she felt like a coward because, now, she was faced with a real, legitimate question about what came next and she didn't know her answer. She hated not knowing. She'd learned that it was one of those things she must have inherited from both sides of her family, and she was not in the business of not knowing things – she hadn't been since she was sixteen. She almost feared it, the very idea of not knowing gave her chills and admitting to not knowing was something she wasn't entirely fond of either. It was her job to know everything and to anticipate everything and not knowing just wasn't in her jurisdiction. "I-I don't know," she stated. Samantha looked up at her boss and suddenly felt really weird; it was like there was something between them she didn't understand and hadn't thought was possible. Were their two scenarios _really_ that similar? Had she really found a kindred spirit for some aspect of her life? "I-I just don't know." She added before gulping down the rest of her drink. This, she realised, was going to be a multiple drink kind of problem.

XX

Samantha awoke the next morning, curled awkwardly in a chocolate-coloured leather arm chair. A blanket, weirdly soft, one she didn't recognise, was draped over her as her brain pounded against her skull. She looked down at the two empty glasses (one, a crystal whiskey tumbler and the other a small shot glass) on the coffee table beside her and groaned. She couldn't help but think that – and maybe it was the horrendous aftertaste in her mouth – she had swapped whiskey for tequila. Two days in a row? This was the sort of thing she couldn't allow to continue.

She rubbed at her eyes, knowing she'd be ridding them of what little mascara she still had on her eyelashes, before stretching out her limbs. She was only half-sure she recognised her surroundings. It was only when she saw the books lining the wall-to-wall shelving that Samantha realised where she was – that she was, for all intents and purposes, safe. Clearly, she'd gotten too blackout drunk if she couldn't remember turning up at Reid's house – her place of work – like this.

"I was wondering when you'd wake up." Samantha heard and looked around: Reid stood, dressed in jeans and T-shirt, bearing two large, white mugs brimming with coffee. It seemed an odd look for him – Samantha had only ever seen him in perfectly tailored suits. Still, casual suited him. He passed her one and she smiled graciously.

"I-I'm sorry for intruding, I just-"

"Didn't know where else to go? I know, you told me about ten times last night." He finished and she gulped, the piping hot mouthful of bitter coffee she'd just taken burning its way down her throat. How drunk had she been that she couldn't remember saying something like that multiple times over? She didn't think she'd been blackout drunk since college. Oh how things had changed since then. _She'd_ changed since then. Or, at least, she thought she had.

"H-how drunk was I?" she asked cautiously, suddenly concerned that she'd been inappropriately drunk.

"Well you didn't vomit before you passed out in that chair but you _did_ try and prove that you could still remember the Macarena." She explained and she groaned again. The Macarena? What was this, some kind of 90s sitcom?

"Next time, just stop handing me drinks." She told him and he rolled his eyes.

"I tried but you tried to bite me," he explained, raising his hand to show the mark her teeth had left. She winced, looking away apologetically. "So, am I going to have to get used to having an out of control drinking buddy or…" he trailed off as she shook her head.

"No, I think this should probably stay a two-time thing." She responded. This was not – at least in her mind – going to become a regular thing.

"Charlie? Oh Charlie?" someone, a scouse-accented someone, female, in her late-50s, called out. "The front door was unlocked."

"Your _mother's_ here?" Samantha exclaimed incredulously, desperately trying to pat down the back of her hair so that she looked semi-presentable. If she had access to a mirror, she would have used it.

"It would appear so." Reid responded.

It was at this point that one of the most elegant women Samantha had ever seen walked in. her silvery grey hair was brushed back into a chignon, wearing head-to-toe Chanel (Samantha had managed to get a knack for identifying designers over the years). The only visible wrinkles Samantha could spot were some barely there crows' feet at the corners of her ice blue eyes – this woman was a far cry from the docker's daughter Samantha had always heard about. "But I see I've interrupted something."

"No. Not at all," Samantha said quickly, smiling, feeling a little flustered. "I was just leaving," she added before turning to Reid and saying "Good chat, I'll… make sure I write up that press release first thing and… if anything crops up just call me." before rushing out, not giving anyone the chance to say anything else.

She was just outside the doors to the house when she heard her fake-boyfriend's mother call her name. Samantha turned around to see her standing, a look in her eye that Samantha couldn't quite identify. "Samantha, I… I just wanted to say thank you." She stated.

"For what?" the younger woman replied, confused.

"Charles, well, you've made him very happy. He's talked of nothing but you of late."

"Well, he's a good man Mrs Reid. He deserves to be happy." Samantha replied, blushing and smiling politely.

"Are you _sure_ you can't stay? I can't say much of my son's kitchen or his cooking ability but I'm sure we could rustle something up." she suggested.

"I'm sorry, I-I really do have to go. My dad's in town and I was so angry with him yesterday I left him stranded." Samantha said by way of an excuse. It wasn't like it was a lie, she _had_ left her father stranded and she _had_ been angry at him, she still was, but she couldn't stay a minute longer, she really couldn't. Her boss deserved a day in which he didn't have to deal with Samantha's issues.

"At least let me call you a cab, it's the least I can do after all you've done for my son."

"Oh I don't mind the walk, my flat isn't too far from here and the walk will give me a chance to clear my head." It seemed like such a forced response. Okay, her flat was a fair way away from the house she had come to know as her workplace but she _did_ need to think through what she was going to say to her father. He deserved something by way of an apology.

"Only if you're sure." Was the response that came.

XX

Samantha was just a little weirded out by the fact that the door to her flat was open – she was now the only one with a key to it since Wanda had left. She hunted around in her purse for her gun – it was legal that she carry concealed so long as no one else knew where it was (she'd checked) – eventually grasping hold of the cool metal. Her heart thumped in her chest as she brought it out and held it in her hands (at least they were steady). She counted her footsteps as she strode inside, holding the gun in front of her only to be faced with the one person she didn't expect to see "Steve."


	13. Shout

_One Week Earlier_

Samantha couldn't get back to JCTC headquarters fast enough. She was relatively certain that she'd broken at least three traffic laws in the process (she would have been more certain if she were stateside or even in the UK). The place was awash with activity when she got in – half of it with paramedics dealing to the injuries Bucky had inflicted (were it not for Steve, she might have killed the Winter Soldier herself). "What's up?" she asked Natasha after being bumped into by a third, seemingly panicked, agent.

"We think they're headed for Germany. They can fly out from Berlin." The fiery redhead responded. It seemed an almost ironic location really, Germany. Samantha supposed that all roads had to lead back to it at some stage (it was, after all, the location of so many of Steve's battles in World War Two, and the very location of the Avengers' – or at least half of them – first battle with Loki). Maybe it was befitting.

"Have we grounded all aircrafts for the next 72 hours?" Samantha asked, knowing that it would be the order she'd give in that situation. She could almost guarantee that were the decision up to Nat alone, she too would opt for that choice.

" _We_ ," she responded, gesticulating to literally everyone in the room "want to. Ross, however, thinks it'll draw attention."

"But given the events at the negotiations and in London, the public would _want_ us to shut down the airports. Heck, they probably expect it." Samantha reasoned but Natasha just shook her head, sending red hair flailing about.

"Explain that to Ross then." She suggested.

And that was what Samantha set off to do but she was stopped by a hand on her shoulder. "What?" she snapped, turning around to see Rhodey stood behind her. "Oh, hi Rhodey."

"Bad day?" he asked and she smiled, conflicted somewhere between happy and annoyed. She was somewhat glad that there was another friendly face around the headquarters. At the same time, she didn't want to take sides – bringing her dad's best friend into the mix wasn't exactly helping. She shouldn't have been surprised at his being there, not really anyway, she'd heard that Rhodey had been a part of the apprehending of Bucky, Sam and Steve.

"That's one way of putting it." she bluffed. She looked around her, suddenly suspicious of those who surrounded her. "Look, I don't mean to be rude but I've got to go find Everett Ross, he and I need to have a little conversation about national security." She announced before dashing off, quickly, not even waiting for what Rhodey had to say next.

Samantha stormed into Ross's office, metaphorical guns blazing, not caring that there were two other men in the office. "Close the damn airport!" she shouted, slamming the door behind her.

"Samantha." He stated her name as though he were warning her about something but she wasn't having any of it – she was too angry for that.

She strode past the two other men who were – at that moment – occupying the office, still not noticing them and slammed her palms down onto the desk, leaning over it so that her face was now mere centimetres from that of Everett Ross "I don't want to hear it Everett! They're on their way to Berlin _right_ now – the three of them: Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes, and Sam Wilson. If we don't close that airport, they'll get away. That's on you!" she yelled irately. She couldn't begin to comprehend why this had her so riled up. there was a feeling in the pit of her stomach that something was about to go wrong and she couldn't figure out why.

As if predicting her feeling, one of the men cut in. She took in the appearance of the man in question. He had salt and pepper hair, could have been a dead ringer for George Clooney were it not for the wrinkles that lined his face from, what she guessed to be, a permanent (or semi-permanent) scowl on his face "Miss Stark, you can't expect us to close off entire _airports_ on a hunch. Do you realise how much confusion and delay that would cause?" he said in a German accent. If she was stereotyping, she might claim that his nationality was the reason for the permanent scowl.

She shook her head, "With all due respect, this isn't just a hunch. I _know_ Steve Rogers. I'm engaged to him for Christ's sake. I was friends with Sam Wilson. I've interrogated Bucky Barnes. Steve is relatively predictable no matter what the situation is. He'll _go_ to the airport. The other two have been through enough with him that they'll just follow blindly." Samantha explained succinctly.

XX

Samantha's persuasion skills were better than expected and she was quickly packed into a car with Natasha and some Spider kid her dad had managed to pick up in Queens. He'd sat in the back of the car, fanboying and Samantha had noticed that it was infuriating Natasha more and more. Eventually, Samantha had warned him that annoying Natasha Romanoff was not a good idea.

The airport itself looked like a ghost town of planes. "You sure he's here? I mean this place is dead." Spideykid, as Samantha was now calling him (he wasn't quite old enough to be called a man), asked suspiciously.

"Look, kid. You're here for a job, you do the job, you get out. That's how it works. You don't question what everyone tells you." Samantha instructed, even _she_ was getting annoyed by him. She was putting a heck of a lot of faith in a kid she'd only just met.

"Kid? I'm _sixteen_!" he complained and she rolled her eyes.

"In the eyes of the law, you're still a kid. Look, just… just do as you're told and go and hide somewhere. My dad wants your existence to be some kind of surprise for some reason." She instructed, giving him the look she'd perfected that scared the living daylights out of people. She liked that look.

"You know, you should smile more, you're scary when you give people that look." Spidey stated. Samantha merely raised her eyebrows at him and he dashed off. If he only knew how many men had said that to her over the years, he might have thought twice about saying it.

XX

Steve marched out towards a helicopter in full Captain America garb and Samantha smiled from her own hiding spot: He looked _good_ in that suit. Something stopped him from climbing into the helicopter though and it wasn't until Samantha saw some form of electric charge around the propellers that she realised that it was Stark Tech being used. She clamped her hand over her mouth so that the odd, strangled sound she choked out couldn't be heard. She didn't want to be here. She really didn't. Her father landed in his Iron Man suit, red and gold in colour, and soon after so too did Rhodey. "Wow, it's so weird how you run into people at the airport. Don't you think that's weird?" Tony said and Samantha rolled her eyes, that was the best he could come up with? The old man was getting sloppy.

"Definitely weird." Rhodey agreed.

"Hear me out Tony." Steve begged, his voice steady and Samantha wondered how his voice _could_ stay that steady. This wasn't exactly a good position to be in – about to verse off against a man (well, two men) in a fully weaponised, titanium alloy suit.

Then, of course, T'Challa took it upon himself to land. Where he had come from, Samantha didn't know – all she knew was that the Black Panther thing came from being part of the Wakandan Royal Family, she thought that, maybe, he'd always be an enigma. "Captain." He uttered, almost bitterly – unsurprising considering Steve was protecting a fugitive who was accused of killing his father.

"Your Highness." Steve said with a slight bow of the head – ever the man to give off a sign of respect, even to the apparent enemy.

When had her father's helmet disappeared (was it a helmet or a mask? She still wasn't sure of the mechanics of that damned suit)? She'd been so focussed on the exchange between Steve and T'Challa that she hadn't even noticed the removal of the helmet/mask-thing until her father had started speaking "Anyway, all right, I've run out of patience." And here came the code word that meant enter Spideykid "Underoos."

As the kid's web attached itself to Steve's shield, Samantha noticed that Natasha had walked into the picture (quite literally). That was supposed to be her cue. It was okay, she could stay, hiding behind a plane until things got heated, right? She didn't really want to be involved in the whole thing anyway.

Oh wait! No, the webs were no longer attached to the shield, now they were acting as handcuffs around Steve's wrists. Only _Samantha_ was allowed to handcuff Steve and that kind of behaviour was strictly limited to the bedroom thank you very much. None of this crap in an airport. Now the kid was on top of a bloody helicopter – of course he was. No wonder her dad liked him, he seemed to have no fear. "Nice job kid." Oh really, _he_ got told he did a nice job but if _she'd_ have done something like that she was 'insane' and 'ruining a party'.

"Thanks." And he had good manners too. "I could have stuck the landing a little better, it's just… new suit. It's nothing, Mr Stark. It's perfect. Thank you." The kid got a suit from her dad too. She had never gotten a new super suit from her dad. She'd always gotten what S.H.I.E.L.D. handed her and when something didn't quite go to plan, she got told off for being reckless. She really wasn't sure she liked this kid. Nope, she couldn't get bogged down in misguided jealousy, not now.

"Yeah, we really don't need to start a conversation." Her father said, well at least he could get the kid to shut up for five seconds.

"Okay. Cap. Captain. Big fan. I'm Spiderman." Maybe not.

"Yeah we'll talk about it later, just… good job."

Then, suddenly things turned chaotic. Steve was raising his shield, an arrow was shot (Clint was supposed to be retired!) and all hell broke loose caused by an ant guy. "Mr Stark, what should I do?" she heard Spidey. The kid had really gotten on her nerves and she was pissed at what appeared to be sudden favouritism for him from her father – he hadn't noticed that _she_ hadn't shown up at the right spot on time. So, in her infinite wisdom, she decided to follow him. She watched as he swung from the windows, through the glass and right into the terminal, knocking Sam out of the way and grabbing onto Bucky's metal arm. Samantha took it upon herself to jump through the glass and right in front of Sam, as Spidey obsessed over Bucky's arm. Sam took a running jump and opened his wings so that he could grab a hold of 'Spiderman' and carry him out of the way.

"Hey." Bucky said upon seeing Samantha.

She smiled with a slight laugh "That guy's been pissing me off for the past couple of hours."

"You have the right to remain silent." She heard Spidey said as he tried to punch Sam in the chest.

"Kid, you're a vigilante, you don't say that." Samantha yelled through laughter, perhaps a bit too soon as he started swinging from the rafters.

He looked around for her "Oh hey, Miss Stark, you know, I really think I've got this so… you can go now."

"And miss the show? I should have brought popcorn." She quipped as she watched the boys run off.

"Hey, where'd they go?" Spidey answered, looking around for Bucky and Sam.

She smiled, giggling a little as they ran away. "Oops."

She watched as 'Spiderman' jumped down to face her. "Whose side are you _on_?"

"Hmm… well I know that Bucky couldn't have killed the Wakandan king, at the same time I'm not exactly a big fan of how my fiancé didn't _quite_ agree to the accords so… no one's." she explained, finally coming to a conclusion on her position in this whole ridiculous fight. She cherry picked which parts she agreed with and which ones she didn't.

"So… how does it work then, are you like a traitor… or…"

She laughed. "I don't actually know." She announced before doing a backflip (just for show really) and then running off to find where the fighting was at. Spidey followed.

When she got to the tarmac, everyone had started to line up and, while Spidey took his place between Rhodey and Vision, Samantha decided to stand on the end, in between the two "Now I want a good clean game… from all of you." She said, jokingly quoting from Harry Potter (she really couldn't help it).

"Samantha! Get on the side." Her father ordered and she rolled her eyes.

"Eh, you've got Spideykid. You'll be fine." She said casually.

"She doesn't have to be involved in this if she doesn't want to." Steve agreed. At least _he_ understood.

"I'm not a _kid_." Spidey yelled, clearly offended.

"What's your problem with Spidey?" Tony asked, ignoring Steve's comment.

"Let's not talk about this now dad," God. The whole yelling across an airport thing was annoying. "I'm just saying, you have Spidey which means you all have even numbers and I'm not exactly in agreement with either of you so I'll just, like, referee or something."

"There isn't a referee in a fight Samantha." Steve said, okay, even _he_ couldn't let her have this? Really?

"There is in a boxing match and there will be in this one. So, fight or whatever." She said almost angrily. Things turned chaotic almost immediately after that. Natasha and Clint were fighting, then Wanda was throwing Natasha across the airport. She could barely keep a track of everything. It wasn't until the Ant guy (what was it with these superheroes and naming themselves after bugs?) turned huge and was standing in front of a plane that Samantha realised what she could do. She took off at a run, dodging a falling Ant Man and headed towards an aircraft hangar. She kept herself hidden as Natasha confronted Steve and Bucky. "You're not gonna stop." The assassin surmised.

"You know I can't." Steve responded. Samantha didn't quite hear what happened next as she ran to the quin jet she knew the two men were aiming for. She sat down in the pilot's seat, crossing her leg. She turned the chair around and there he was. "Samantha." He breathed.

"Steve, you don't have to do this. Please, I can work this out with everyone, just don't do this." She pleaded. She didn't like the amount of desperation in her voice but, still, there it was.

"Do what Samantha? You want me to just hand Bucky over like it's – it's nothing. He's my best friend!"

"You know that's not what I'm saying. I can get him amnesty, I can make sure that none of you guys are charged with anything more than a parking ticket. I just… I just need you to trust me!" she begged, standing up, getting toe to toe with him. It was a stupid decision really, it was the decision that allowed Bucky into the pilot's seat, the one that allowed take off. She felt the ground beneath her feet moving, the plane door was still open though. She held onto Steve, trying to make him see sense. "Please, Steve, for me."

She wasn't prepared for what he did next. She really wasn't. The words "I can't do that." were barely out of Steve's mouth and registering in her brain when she felt herself being forced back and out of the plane. She looked up at him, there was something akin to sorrow and remorse in his eyes as she fell through the air. How could he do this to her.

"A little help please." She said, pressing on her earpiece as she fell towards concrete. Nobody came, everyone was too busy. Vision was focussed on Wanda. Natasha and T'Challa were fighting it out in the aircraft hangar. Her father was, once again, focussed on the Spiderkid. Samantha tried to think fast. What could she do? This was not good, not good at all. She had to create a landing that wouldn't hurt too terribly much. On a whim, she laid her palms flat and hoped that it would do something.


	14. Never Be The Same

_Previously,_

 _She counted her footsteps as she strode inside, holding the gun in front of her only to be faced with the one person she didn't expect to see. "Steve."_

XX

"Steve. What are you doing here?" she asked, not sure whether she was happy to see him or not. No, she decided, she definitely was not happy to see him. How could she be after what he did? She was still angry with him. There was a reason she'd broken off their engagement and it was a good one at that. She'd stick with her guns on it, that was her decision.

"You really going to use that?" he asked, pointing to the gun she still held in her hands, pointed in his general vicinity. Her hands were shaking and she wasn't certain if it was because of fear or anticipation. Was this even her?

She had to think about that. She had to think about whether she'd use the gun too. "Give me a good reason why I shouldn't Steve." She announced, her voice low as she marched forward, deciding to hold the butt of the gun to his chest. "Why are you here?" she asked through gritted teeth.

He stuttered, clearly unsure of what to say "I-I…" he began and Samantha wasn't sure whether to let him continue with this.

"I'm waiting."

"Could you just put the gun down, it'd make this whole thing a heck of a lot easier." She bit her lip for a moment, unsure as to how to proceed. Then she placed the gun on a nearby side table. "I-I… honestly, I didn't think I'd get this far, I thought you'd have kicked me out by now."

"Don't tempt me. Why are you here." Her voice was gravelly, applying the same tone she used when interrogating someone, she'd perfected that one. She was angry with him, so angry. She was latching onto his claim that she was disloyal if only because she didn't want to deal with her mislaid trust in Steve. She was still coming to grips with the fact that he'd pushed her out of a plane, that he'd barely even cared enough to make sure that she was alright.

"I-I guess I wanted to know why you didn't take sides during the fight at the airport. Why not just pick a side, it would have been easier?" he asked, giving her those puppy dog eyes – the ones that used to make her melt. She'd thought it over, the fact that she didn't pick a side. She knew that she'd made enough of a show at the time to make it look like she was on her father's side – that way she could keep herself out of prison. At the time, she'd been protecting her identity, the one she'd been handed, the one she'd recently destroyed by revealing her true identity in the middle of a press briefing. She could only support a part of Steve's agenda, the part where an innocent man wasn't executed. The part where the Accord wasn't signed? Even now, especially now, that wasn't something she could ever get behind. Whether she could tell Steve all that was another matter entirely.

"Why does it even matter? It's over and done with, been and gone."

"It matters because we ended things over it."

She wasn't even going to let the fact that he'd called a two-and-a-half-year relationship 'things' hurt her. She was way past that now. " _We_ didn't end anything. _I_ ended our _relationship_ because you called me disloyal. I ended whatever the hell we were because you threw me from a goddamn plane!"

"You changed sides by the minute Samantha. What was I supposed to think? What was I supposed to do?" he yelled. The anger was there in his eyes, guttural as it escaped from his lips and Samantha found herself unwittingly taking a step back. There was desperation in there too.

She yelled out a noise, unintelligible even to her, it was rough and loud – perhaps a little high-pitched – slamming her hand on the wall behind her. "You were supposed to trust me! You weren't supposed to try and kill me!" She exploded before quickly calming herself. She couldn't get angry with him. No, she had to give him a more definitive answer. At least then she could satiate whatever appetite for truth he suddenly had – not that he'd really bothered to ask her when it counted. "You act like that last part is nothing – and maybe it is for you. Maybe that doesn't matter to you. Your own best friend has tried to kill you enough times for Christ's sake. To me, it means something when your fiancé throws you from a plane, possibly to your doom, with barely a second thought." She added, trying to remain calm, trying to retain some sense of calm. "As for what I was thinking? I was thinking that both you and my dad were being stupid. I knew that the Accords were something we needed, something we _still_ need. Your actions – in Berlin and Siberia – proved that more than anything. Yeah, I knew that Bucky couldn't have done what they were saying he did but he's still a criminal!" she yelled, her breath heavy.

"So, why not just stay out of it?" he asked.

"You think I had a _choice_ back in Brussels? One minute I was asleep in a hotel room, the next I woke up in a cell at the JCTC. I had everything hanging in the balance, I had to maintain some sort of façade the whole way through otherwise that cell would become my home. I was caught between a rock and a hard place. And anyway, it was you who once told me that sometimes the easiest choice is the wrong one." She said, trying to justify her actions. She was basically throwing his own words back at him, not that she cared. He deserved it. She watched as his eyes softened, the anger changing to something akin to understanding. "Anyway, you wanted answers, now you've got them." It was her way of indicating that he ought to leave. She turned away from him so that he couldn't see the tears she was anxious to wipe away.

He walked past her, closing the door behind him with a click. She was left, breathing heavily as she sobbed, her right hand on the nearby side table, her left over her mouth. She was emotionally spent. It couldn't have been more than a minute before the door opened again and she turned around to see Steve stood in front of her, once again "What more could you _possibly_ want?" she screamed at him, a cocktail of anger and upset filling her.

"I didn't push you. Not intentionally anyway. I knocked you and you fell backwards and trust me, if I could have caught you or found some way of making sure you were okay, I would have." He said it so earnestly and she believed him. She wasn't sure that Steve could lie to her even if he wanted to.

In a matter of seconds, her inhibitions and her ire were gone as her lips crashed into his. She wrapped her legs around his waist and snaked her arms around the back of her neck. He was reciprocating her kiss and she was being pushed up against the wall. Of course, it was at that moment that her phone rang. "Leave it." He told her, both of them had ragged breath.

"I can't. It's probably work." She panted, hoisting herself down from her awkward position (it never seemed that way in the movies).

"On a Sunday?"

"I'm the Prime Minister's Press Secretary _and_ an MI6 Agent. Work is 24/7 now." She explained, rifling through her bag until she found the offending item.


End file.
